Sri Lanka’s veteran all-rounder Angelo Mathews apologised to the entire for performing poorly in the ongoing T20 World Cup 2024 as the Islanders were knocked out of the tournament.
Mathews, who has been playing for Sri Lanka since 2008, stated that Sri Lanka didn’t do well in the T20 World Cup and everyone is disappointed that they couldn’t make it to the second round.
“I think first of all we've let the entire nation down and we are really sorry because we've let ourselves down,” Mathews said ahead of the team’s final game against Netherlands.
“We never expected this. I mean, we came across a lot of challenges but those are not something to sort of worry about, but it's unfortunate that we didn't make the second round.”
“This format is such where you can't take any team lightly. I mean they come up with, they've got nothing to lose and you can't you can't take any team lightly. I mean we've seen that especially over the last few years also especially in this tournament, we have seen teams beating bigger teams. As I always say you can't take any team lightly.”
The 37-year-old also added that in T20Is, no team can be taken lightly as Nepal almost defeated South Africa in their previous match of the World Cup. He also expressed regret that Sri Lanka’s match against Nepal was washed out in Florida.
“It's very important. I think we can't take any given team lightly. We saw Nepal almost beat South Africa yesterday. It's unfortunate that our Nepal game was washed out. But it is what it is. We have just one more game in the tournament, and we'll play for pride,” he added.
“But it's another day tomorrow, and then we have to come up against the Netherlands. And the Netherlands are a very, very dangerous team. So, we hope to play well and beat them.
Sri Lanka came into the tournament with three consecutive T20I series wins and famously beat Bangladesh in Bangladesh, but they couldn’t live up to the billing in the T2 0World Cup.”
