Confidence the tonic

Sri Lanka's stand-in captain Dinesh Chandimal said that Chandika Hathurusingha's 'confidence tonic' played a big role in their turnaround from a dismal start to clinch the tri-series trophy with a comprehensive 79-run victory against Bangladesh in Mirpur yesterday.

"We all know he is a really good coach. He gave us more confidence. That's the main thing. If you can trust your coach, good results will come. That's what he did. This is all about hard work from the players, coach, management, selectors, Sri Lanka Cricket as well as Angelo.

"He [Matthews] is the one who brought the team here, so credit goes to him also. It was a really happy moment for us. This is what we wanted, winning the series, so we grabbed the opportunity with both hands," said Chandimal during post-match briefing.

It was indeed a day of reckoning for the Sri Lankans under their new head coach Hathurusingha. They had a few rough years and 2017 was an especially bad year as they lost home and away to India, were defeated by Pakistan 5-0, lost to Zimbabwe away and were ousted at the group stage of the ICC Champions trophy.

"This is all about working hard, especially after you lost the first two games, it is difficult to get back in this kind of tournament. The guys put their heart and soul in the practices and then when they went out to the middle they put their heart and soul. They had the plans and they executed well, and credit goes to everyone who played the series," he responded when asked what this trophy meant to them.

Chandimal said that the plan was to play 'competitive cricket' in the final and they backed themselves to do that.

"Before we came to the game today we did not think about the result. We just wanted to play competitive cricket. We all know they [Bangladesh] are very good, especially on their own soil and in the last couple of years they played some outstanding cricket. We just wanted to play competitive cricket and we knew a good result could come after that," he revealed.

Although his bowlers did tremendously to skittle out the home side for 142, he also highly praised the effort of his batsmen.

"It was tough [the pitch]. I prayed before the toss, 'I need to win the toss'. It was a dry wicket. Credit goes to Upul [Tharanga] and [Niroshan] Dickwella, they put on a 70-run partnership and played some excellent cricket. That was a turning point. We knew after 20 overs that if we can get 220-230, that's a winning total," he said.