da gbg bet： Man of the match in the fourth game of the Coca Cola Cup, RusselArnold not only guided his team to victory but also returned to form,which has eluded him in the recent past
Rex Clementine25-Jul-2001Man of the match in the fourth game of the Coca Cola Cup, RusselArnold not only guided his team to victory but also returned to form,which has eluded him in the recent past. After the game, in anexclusive interview with CricInfo, Arnold reflecting on his knocksaid, “I have been having a rough time since lately. It’s been a greatfeeling to return to form after that rough time.”Arnold made two low scores in the first two games of the triangularseries and as a result Sri Lanka’s middle order too collapsed. SriLanka were in trouble at 27 for four but two crucial partnerships withMarvan Atapattu for the fifth wicket and Suresh Perera for the sixthenabled Sri Lanka to beat the Black Caps convincingly by five wickets.”It was not so good when I went to bat, but with Marvan around wealways had our hopes,” said Arnold.”Our plan was to just pick up the singles and twos. We didn’t look atthe scoreboard but just kept on batting. We knew we had a chance towin with Suresh, Vaas and Kumar to come. It was unfortunate thatMarvan got out,” reflected Arnold who ended up with an unbeaten 91.After the 110-run partnership with Atapattu ended, Arnold put on a103-run stand for the 6th wicket with Perera who played anentertaining innings and ended with an unbeaten 56 off just 51 balls.”Suresh batted really well. He not only hung around, he also made arun a ball. That made things easier. Actually I thought of finishingthings in the 50th over, but we finished it in the 49th.”Sri Lankan captain Sanath Jayasuriya was delighted with finishing allthe matches on a victorious note; “I am really happy. Not only did wewin the match, most of the batsmen returned to form as well. Now it’sjust Mahela” said the Sri Lankan captain.”When I lost the toss, we were planning to restrict them to 220 butthey got past 230″ said Jayasuriya who gave just 14 overs for his fastbowlers. “The wicket was taking turn. The Kiwis are not the bestplayers of spin bowling. More importantly they had got off to a flierscoring 83 runs in the first 15 overs.”New Zealand stand-in captain, Craig McMillan admitted after the matchthat the partnership between Arnold and Atapattu took the game awayfrom them, “I thought we batted well to get 236 and bowled well to getfour quick wickets but Marvan and Arnold played brilliantly to takethe game away from us.””We’ve been in situations like that on previous occasions but have notgone about the way these guys went about. It was interesting to watchand they showed that things can be turned around even after a badstart. Even when we got four quick wickets we desperately wanted toget either Atapattu or Arnold. But it just didn’t happen,” saidMcMillan.New Zealand made a dream start by dismissing the dangerous SanathJayasuriya, Avishka Gunawardene, and Romesh Kaluwitharana cheaply.They also claimed the wicket of Mahela Jayawardene early but fromthere on things just didn’t go right for the Kiwis.”We probably had the better of the game in the first three quarters.But things slipped away from us in the last quarter. We also probablyweren’t tidy in certain areas that we’ve been tidy in previous games.McMillan felt certain fielding lapses were too costly but he had anexcuse as well. “I thought the fielding was not up to expectations.But to be honest it was pretty dark out there and the boys had troubleseeing the ball.”