Moody remains upbeat

Nuwan Kulasekara bowls against England A © Getty Images

Tom Moody, Sri Lanka's coach, refused to be dispirited by the thumping 10-wicket defeat his side suffered at the hands of England A at New Road.

"There are two ways of looking at it," Moody said. "It would have obviously been great to have a few hundreds scored and a few wickets taken, but that wasn't to be. We didn't go into this match with any real indication of what our final XI or batting line-up is going to be - we'll assess that over the next few days, but there are opportunities within the squad to step up to the mark. The batting line-up isn't settled but that hasn't changed just because of a poor batting performance."

Moody explained that the players remained upbeat. "This team is a young team and they're going into any situation bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and looking forward to the challenges. That's certainly the way I'm trying to express it to them that these conditions and challenges that we face are opportunities for us to learn and opportunities for us to challenge ourselves as individuals and step up to the mark."

He went on to say that the Duke ball, which many of the batsmen have not faced before, was another factor that had to be taken into consideration. "It's been a good eye-opener because this is the first time we've used the 2006 Duke ball in a match. We've had a good look at it and we're going to have to work very hard between now and Thursday as bowlers and batsmen to familiarise ourselves with the differences.

"The seam's a little bit more elevated and it's bound to help if there is a bit of seam movement. From our point of view that's not a problem because we've got a couple of bowlers that can really exploit that and a spinner that doesn't mind wrapping his fingers around a big, heavy seam."