Pakistan Today

Australia aim to level series

Sri Lanka’s impressive all-round performance in the first match in Sydney has given them a 1-0 lead and their tour of Australia ends with the possibility of making it 2-0 during the final game at the MCG. Whatever happens in Melbourne, Sri Lanka will remain the world’s No.1-ranked Twenty20 side and Australia will stay at No.7, but for Angelo Mathews’ men this is an opportunity to at least claim superiority over Australia in one format on this tour. For Australia, victory or defeat in this outing means little in itself, but for individual players it is a means to show the selectors why they should win further opportunities. Australia have few T20 engagements this year and for men like Aaron Finch, Shaun Marsh, Adam Voges, James Faulkner, Ben Cutting and Ben Laughlin, every game is a chance to firm up a claim on a T20 position for future contests. After all, the next World T20 tournament is only just over a year away. Aaron Finch is a batsman of enormous potential but he hasn’t shown his best during his outings against Sri Lanka so far this month. A clean striker who hit the roof of Melbourne’s Etihad Stadium while playing for the Renegades this season, Finch has the potential to be a an important top-order man for Australia’s T20 side alongside David Warner and, when he returns, Shane Watson. He just needs to grab his opportunity. Before the limited-overs games began, Kushal Perera was almost unheard of in Australia. But when he got a chance in the ODIs due to Dinesh Chandimal’s injury, he showed himself to be a promising strokemaker as well as gloveman. On T20 international debut in Sydney, he made a crisp 33 from 22 balls opening the batting and was a key factor in Sri Lanka’s chase going so smoothly. In the first match, David Warner’s unbeaten 90 from Australia’s total of 137 was the highest percentage of a team’s total ever scored by one batsman in a T20 international.

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