Karunaratne relieved by scrappy SL win

Sri Lanka Captain Dimuth Karunaratne was relieved to see his team return to winning ways at the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019.
An opening-match thrashing at the hands of New Zealand left Sri Lanka with plenty to prove and it made a meal at times of seeing off Afghanistan on Tuesday. 
But the result was the primary objective and Sri Lanka won, if only by 34 runs on the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method.
Sri Lanka’s total of 201 all out in drizzly Cardiff was a missed opportunity to put together a big score, after cruising to 144 for one by early in the 22nd over. 
“I think we had such a good start. But suddenly we lost a couple of wickets,” Karunaratne said at the post-match presentations. 
“That’s the negative side on our part ... but otherwise the bowling and fielding was a high note.”
“After losing the first game which was not easy we had to keep our minds positive. We have experience in these conditions. We lost against New Zealand and then we knew what we had to do here. We started really well and the only thing is we needed to capitalise in the middle part.”
Speaking about the batting performance, he added: “We have to think about that.” (Agencies)