Sri Lanka in no mood to let up grasp on series

Shahriar Ahmed keeps his eye on the ball during a Bangladesh practice session © AFP

Tom Moody, the Sri Lankan coach, has ruled out resting his key players for the second one-dayer against Bangladesh tomorrow, hoping to complete a clean sweep. Sri Lanka lead the three-match series 1-0 following their emphatic 88-run victory in Colombo.

"We certainly do not want to go lightly," Moody said. "We have got faith in all the guys in the squad, but our aim is to win all three matches and, with that in mind, we do not want to weaken the side [by experimenting]."

Moody said Sri Lanka still had room for improvement despite winning the first match comfortably. "There are few areas we would like to improve on," he said, "and we hope to work on them during the next two matches. One of the areas where we want to do well is to make sure we score maximum runs during power plays.

"We did not score as many as we would have liked in the first game, but we are still learning like any other team. We would also like to be consistent with the ball and then we have observed that our top-order batsmen got starts, but did not go on to make big scores."

Habibul Bashar, the Bangladesh captain, said he was looking forward to an improved allround performance from his team. "We certainly can field much better than what we did in the first match," said Bashar, whose side missed four catches and a stumping in the first game. "That is a definite area where we need to improve along with our top-order batting. We lost too many wickets in the first 15 overs. Instead of batting longer, we played too many shots too early."