Hitting a winning streak is not a good omen

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

LONDON: Sri Lanka found out to their dismay that hitting a winning streak in a tournament is not a good thing especially if you botch it in the final. That has happened on several occasions to South Africa, and in the second edition of the ICC World Twenty20 Sri Lanka suffered that fate when they were well and truly outplayed by an energetic Pakistan team to lose the final by a convincing margin of eight wickets at Lord’s on Sunday.
No doubt Sri Lanka and Pakistan were the best teams in the competition to beat all and sundry and qualify for the final. But in Pakistan’s case they had reason to rethink and plan out where they had gone wrong when they suffered two defeats on their way to the final. Pakistan lost their opening Group match of the tournament to England by 48 runs and also their opening Super Eight match to Sri Lanka by 19 runs. They learnt a lot from their mistakes in these two games and were able to correct them whereas in Sri Lanka’s case they simply swept the board beating all and sundry to reach the final with six wins out of six. Somewhere down the line they had to fault and to their disappointment it happened to be in a final.

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