Hot on the heels of crushing Bangladesh by an innings and 78 runs in the second test to registering a 1-nil series win inside of four days on Saturday morning, Sri Lanka captain Dhananjaya de Silva welcomed the ICC World Test Championship on an euphoric red hot note when he said, “The WTC is like other World Cups — a lot of matches are like knockouts for us.”
The Lankan captain who was over the moon over Sri Lanka hitting the points board in the first of the 2025 Test Championship went on to state the importance of winning by virtue of minimizing mistakes.
“We’ve talked about how we win when we make the fewest mistakes, and we need those wins to get those extra points. In the last cycle, we made a few mistakes, and that’s what cost us. Hopefully, we can correct that this cycle,” Dhananjaya de Silva commented.
De Silva further emphasized that Sri Lanka playing fewer tests had created a feeling of making every match a knockout encounter where such a positive approach would be the way to go.
“The WTC is like other World Cups — a lot of matches are like knockouts for us. In the last cycle, we made a few mistakes, and that’s what cost us. Hopefully, we can correct that this cycle.,” he quipped on Saturday’s winning note.
Given the far and few test match itineraries, Sri Lanka will be heavily dependent on the “percentage of points won” system that allows teams with fewer matches to remain in contention for a top-two finish. This factor, the Lankan test captain stressed had changed the mindset of his players.
“It’s become a competitive trophy. We’ve even started thinking about our run rates in light of what’s happening. The Championship is a great thing for Test cricket,” he said. “We saw last time how well South Africa did and how they performed well recently, and they deserved to win it. They hadn’t won an ICC trophy, and the Test Championship meant a lot to them. As a country, they can value that highly.”
Indeed, the fact that Sri Lanka has been slated by the ICC Lords who govern the game to play its next WTC Test in May 2026 which by itself is a tragi-comic story of the much touted WTC has driven Sri Lanka to buck all the odds in meeting such a one sided challenge.