Russel Arnold

What a relief it is to have finally played a substantial innings after an indifferent run during the ARY Gold Cup in Sharjah and the Coca Cola Cup in Sri Lanka. Since making an unbeaten 39 against England in Dambulla I hadn't been getting runs for the team and that had been very depressing.

Somewhere along the line I knew that I would emerge from my poor form, but self-doubt can creep into your game. I wondered for a while as to whether I should be doing anything different, because I was playing in my normal manner and going nowhere.

In the end I decided against making any wholesale changes to my game; reasoning that it had worked for me before and would do so again. Nevertheless, I have been trying to become a little more compact and a little sharper with my shot making.

Apart from that I tried to build up my self-belief. Dav Whatmore gave me plenty of encouragement and I used video footage of past innings to get me in the right frame of mind. It's a tool I'm fond of using. Not so much for technical, but for mental reasons. If you watch yourself scoring runs you can recreate the feeling of doing well and carry those positive emotions into the next game.

The omens did not look good though when I went into bat last Wednesday after the Kiwis had reduced us to 27 for four. We had no frontline batsmen to come and were chasing 236, which remains the highest score in the tournament. On the positive side I at least had plenty of time to play myself in and build an innings properly.

When I met in Marvan Atapattu in the middle we agreed that we simply had to stay together and couldn't take any unnecessary risks. Even after the 25 over point we didn't set any targets, because we knew that we needed to get within striking distance before we lost any further wickets.

Eventually we aimed for a target of 80 runs in the last ten overs, which was possible if we still had men to come. In fact, we had a to chase a little less, despite the loss of Marvan in the 35th over.

In the end we won the game easily thanks to a terrific innings from Suresh Perera. He remained positive throughout and played some brilliant strokes. The key though was his shot selection. He was not recklessly swinging his bat, but carefully selecting which balls to hit. He eased the pressure on me and we rattled along in the last five overs, scoring 40 runs with nine balls to spare.

That victory gave the team a real confidence boost. We had had our backs against the wall, but for the second game in succession we had pulled through to win. We realised that we still hadn't performed to our potential, but knew that when we clicked we would be very hard to defeat.

The disappointing defeat by India though highlighted the fact that there was still plenty to work to do and will prevent any complacency over the up coming games.

We lost our way in that match after a fine opening stand between Romesh and Sanath. However, having started so well and being well aware of the batting talent in the Indian side, even without Ganguly, we made the mistake of pushing for too high a target.

Instead of batting normally, scoring at around four runs per over, which would have given us a decent score, we went for the big shots. These were difficult to play, especially for the incoming batsmen, because it took a while to gauge the pace of the wicket. The pitch may have been a better one, but a par score was still closer to 220 than 250.

India also deserves credit too, however, as they did bowl well after the first 15 overs. The bowlers took the pace off the ball and were very accurate. They created the pressure that forced us into making vital mistakes. Then, when they batted, VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid, showed us just how dangerous they can be. With Laxman staying on and Ganguly coming back we have to be very careful.

The tournament now moves on to the Sinhalese Sports Club for the third round of matches and we remain confident. Our mistakes against India cost us the game and we know that if we play to our potential we will. At the moment though we are not performing as a team, in fact our form has been patchy, especially in the batting, which is yet to fire on all cylinders. Hopefully, the extra pace of the SSC wicket will prove to be the catalyst we need.

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