Setbacks are part and parcel of cricket: Kaushal Silva

Sri Lankan batsman Kaushal Silva was one of the severely impacted players when the team had an embarrassing outing in South Africa earlier this year. Sri Lanka have been having a tough time in the recent past. They were whitewashed at home by team India recently. Prior to that, they had to settle with a drawn series against Bangladesh.

The worse was when they toured South Africa. Only three fifties were registered by the Sri Lankan top order in the 3-match Test series. After the series, Kaushal Silva was one of the players who was axed. He did not feature in the the series that followed – against Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, and India. However, with the Pakistan series coming up, the selectors called him back.

His recall was primarily due to the fact that he has potential to stay at the crease for long durations. Silva had shown the same in one of the Tests against Australia last year. Speaking to Cricbuzz, he recently noted that he knew his career was not over and he could bounce back into the side.

“It was a tough time for me but it wasn’t the end of my career. I wanted to bounce back and I worked hard. I would say that I worked harder than I usually do. Now that I am here, I want to focus on the game against Pakistan,” quoted Kaushal Silva.

“Setbacks are part and parcel of cricket. I didn’t worry but just concentrated about how I could become a better player. I have goals in my career which I need to achieve and I was more focused on that rather than things that I cannot control,” he added further.

On the things that he worked on

Talking about the things that he worked on during the team when he was out of the national side, Kaushal Silva mentioned that he kept his focus on rotating the strike. Also, he reflected back at the fact that the team had failed to dominate sessions in the South Africa series. He feels that the team will learn from the experiences.

“One of the things that I worked on was rotating the strike. That’s very important when the bowling is tight and there are fewer loose balls. I hope I can execute these things in the middle,” said Silva.

“There are many things that we can improve as a team. In South Africa, we had good partnerships and good sessions, but we failed to dominate the opposition. Our efforts weren’t good enough to win a Test match. What we lacked was inability to consistently dominate a few sessions. That was what we lacked. This is a young side and I am sure the boys have learnt from the experience,” he added.

On playing in UAE

Commenting on the upcoming series against Pakistan, which will be played in the UAE, Kaushal Silva noted that the conditions would be testing. He remarked that the extreme heat of UAE is something that is not found anywhere else in the world. He hopes that the players will keep themselves fresh and hydrated throughout the course of the day.

“We have played a couple of series here. We have experienced the extreme heat here. This is not something that we come across in other parts of the world – even in the sub-continent. We need to keep ourselves hydrated by taking lot of liquid and a good amount of protein to last the full distance of the game. Things like the ice towels to keep ourselves refreshed will be also helpful,” Silva conceded.