West Indies Aim to Topple Out-of-sorts Sri Lanka

Barbados: Sri Lanka get set to take on the Impressive hosts West Indies at Kensington Oval, Bridgetown on Friday.

As Sri Lanka face several problems that the team from the Island Nation needs to place. Their batting has failed to deliver in first round matches against New Zealand and Bangladesh, barring the exceptional contributions by Mahela Jayawardene on both occation.

In the first match against New Zealand, Mahela scored brilliant 81 but Sri Lanka could only manage a total of 131 due to the failure of the rest of the batters. Even in the game against Zimbabwe, Mahela was the lone contributor with his 100 in just 64 balls. The likes of Dilshan, Sangakkara and Perera again failed to make use of a good opportunity to get back amongst runs.

In the bowling department, Lankan are hard hit by the absence of the spin-wizard Muralitharan, who is unlikely to take further part in the World Cup. Malinga and Mendis too haven't had the best of outings, and Sri Lanka would count upon them as well as Angelo Mathews to come to the party as soon as possible.

However, West Indies have different set of problems. The hosts, although won both their matches to qualify to the Super 8s stage, they were made to toil in the match against Ireland, and had luck favour them in a rain curtailed match against England.

Spin is one factor that may play a huge role for the Lankans, the bouncy Barbados pitch is ideally suited for the likes of Roach, Bravo and Rampaul, who can cause the Sri Lankan top order to wobble.

Kemar Roach has made Ricky Ponting look slow on the pull shot. Enough said. And unlike many seamers, he likes bowling yorkers with the new ball. He didn't have a great time in the IPL but the Kensington Oval pitch should help him.

Team news

West Indies Kemar Roach should be back for this pitch and Benn probably will miss out.

Squad from Chris Gayle (capt), Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Narsingh Deonarine, Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard, Denesh Ramdin (wk), Darren Sammy, Sulieman Benn, Ravi Rampaul, Kemar Roach, Andre Fletcher, Jerome Taylor, Wavell Hinds, Nikita Miller

Sri Lanka Will Dilshan get another game? Will Thilan Thushara replace Suraj Randiv, the man who replaced Muralitharan this is a big question for Lankan.

Squad from Mahela Jayawardene, Sanath Jayasuriya, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Kumar Sangakkara (capt & wk), Dinesh Chandimal, Angelo Mathews, Chamara Kapugedera, Nuwan Kulasekara, Ajantha Mendis, Lasith Malinga, Thilan Thushara, Chamara Silva, Suraj Randiv, Muttiah Muralitharan, Chinthaka Jayasinghe, Chanaka Welegedara

Pitch and conditions
After the slow and low pitches in Guyana, the fast bowlers have a lot to smile about in Barbados. The first day saw them picking 21 of 34 wickets. The batsmen from subcontinent are likely to be peppered by short stuff.

Stats and trivia

• Shivnarine Chanderpaul has just made eight runs from the two Twenty20 games he has played against Sri Lanka. On both occasions, he fell to Mendis.
• Mahela Jayawardene has the second-best strike rate (138.53) after Kevin Pietersen among batsmen who have scored more than 550 in Twenty20 internationals. With 622 runs in his kitty, Mahela Jayawardene is the fourth-highest scorer in Twenty20 format.
• Sri Lanka have played West Indies twice in T20 Internationals and have won both games against them. Sri Lanka was the team batting first on both those occasions.
• Mahela Jayawardene requires six more runs to aggregate 500 runs in the T20 World Cups and need one fifty to surpass Gambhir and Hayden as the playes with most 50 plus scores in the World T20.

Match facts
Friday, May 07, 2010
Start time 13:30 local (17:30 GMT)