Mathews wants supporters to turn up in numbers in Sydney

Rex Clementine

reporting from Sydney

As Kumar Sangakkara once said, Sri Lanka’s 12th man is their fans. Sri Lankan fans turn up in big numbers when their team plays in places like Australia, New Zealand and England and captain Angelo Mathews urges fans to show up for today’s quarter-final clash against South Africa here at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

The pool ‘A’ game between Sri Lanka and Australia a fortnight ago was witnessed by a full house of 40,000 with Sri Lankans outnumbering the Australians. Although the quarter-final will be played on a weekday, Mathews was confident the ground support will be huge for his side.

"We’ve been getting tremendous support wherever we played in either New Zealand and in Australia. Especially in playing at places like Sydney and Melbourne, it’s like playing at home. It’s such a wonderful atmosphere. We invite all the Sri Lankans across Australia to come to Sydney, fill up those stands and support us. So we look forward to playing in front of a large crowd," Mathews told journalists yesterday.

A lot of talk lead up to the quarter-finals has been on the form star batsman Kumar Sangakkara has enjoyed in the competition. The 37-year-old became the first man in the history of the game to notch up four consecutive hundreds and Mathews hoped his excellent form continued. "I hope and pray Kumar gets the fifth hundred tomorrow. He has been brilliant in the past four games for us and hopefully he can get one more tomorrow. Obviously, Kumar is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen. He’s the first one to get into the nets and the last to get out of the nets," Mathews said.

Sri Lanka experimented with 23-year-old Dushmantha Chameera for the game against Scotland and he surprised a few clocking 147kmph. Chameera has played only two ODIs so far but Mathews was willing to back the youngster for the crunch game. "He bowls quite fast and he hits that 147 mark which is extraordinary for a Sri Lankan. Although he has played just two games, he has matured. All we want him to do is go out there and bowl fast. That’s all we want. We don’t want him to overreact to the batsmen or anything (like that). We just want him to go out there and bowl fast."

Mathews also praised the contributions of psychologist Jeremy Snape, who has given the players a totally different overview of the game during his brief stints with the national team. "When you come to a tournament like this, there is a lot of pressure on the players. So Jeremy’s role has been to try to reduce the amount of pressure on the players. So he’s been talking to a lot of players individually and as a team. So he’s been very helpful. He helps us out a lot in so many ways."