Not Enough: Angelo Mathews Displeased Over Sri Lanka Playing Just Five Test Matches
Angelo Mathews (Source: Twitter)
Some teams playing their best cricket in the past few years giving precedence to Test cricket, especially after the emergence of the World Test Championship whereas others are still featuring in a handful of matches. And one of them is Sri Lanka who are currently involved in the two-match Test series against New Zealand and will only play three more games during the entire year.
This concern has been raised by the Island Nation's stalwart Angelo Mathews who admitted that this much number of matches are not enough as they have fallen behind in the cricketing circle.
The fact that Lanka after this series will only face Ireland for a one-off Test apart from playing Pakistan in two games, is just not good enough for the game feels the all-rounder. He further remarked that playing in more games will ensure that they are at par in red-ball cricket.
Mathews's statement comes when the visitors are fighting to qualify for the WTC final to be played in June as they aim to win both their games. Moreover, something similar was echoed by West Indies' Jason Holder previously, where he rightfully remarked that no other side aside from the Big Three are involved in more games.
"[It's] unfortunate that we are not playing too many Test matches this year – it's as few as five. We are coming off a long layoff, the last Test was six months back.
"Everyone's talking about Test cricket dying, but we're not doing any good for Test cricket playing only five Tests a year. Hopefully, we'll get more matches this year. Five feels like not enough."
Sri Lanka had a great start to the series as they posted 305 on the board losing six wickets on the way and will be hoping to continue their decent performance with the bat when they take the field on day two.