Pakistan tough to beat at home, says Atapattu

Marvan Atapattu knows the value of home advantage, and he certainly thinks beating Pakistan in Pakistan will be a challenge. "Cricket is a game of uncertainties and I wouldn't want to predict anything at this stage," said Atapattu, as Sri Lanka departed for Pakistan on Sunday to play in the Paktel one-day triangular series and two Tests.

"Pakistan is a good and well balanced side. The way they have played in the past few months under Inzi's [Inzamam's] captaincy, they have done exceptionally well. Beating them is as difficult as somebody coming here and defeating us.

"Pakistan had more strength in their bowling till very recently. However, they have found some good players to get runs at the top and in the middle. They are a very competitive side." Atapattu said the squad of 16 players picked for the one-day triangular tournament covered all areas to suit the conditions they are going to play in Pakistan - four seamers, three spinners and eight batsmen. "We have covered all options to play any side at any given moment."

Pakistan is the team to beat for Sri Lanka even though Zimbabwe is also part of the competition. In the past six months Sri Lanka have beaten a struggling Zimbabwe six out of six times, the last occasion being the Champions trophy game at The Oval last month when they won by four wickets.

Zimbabwe have been playing Sri Lanka so often in the last few months that they are gradually picking up the strengths and weaknesses of the players and are not going to be any pushovers. It was to be Sri Lanka's only win in the Champions trophy tournament for in their next encounter against England they lost and were eliminated.

"It was one of those games that every team goes through. There were teams with more hopes than us. We went there with 18 wins out of 22 games. It was purely bad luck. I don't think we played the game that we are all good at against England," said Atapattu. "Nothing went right. Had everything gone to plan we would have won. I don't want to pinpoint to anyone. We take credit as a team and likewise we take the blame also."

Atapattu said that to make Sri Lanka the best one-day side, they had to keep on improving in all three areas - batting, bowling and fielding. "To be competitive in the cricketing world you have to be updated and be looking at improving day by day, maybe 1%. We make an effort to constantly do something different at practices not just go through the motions. It may not come right every day but it helps.

"The areas we need to work on sometimes depends on the country that you are play in. At home the margin is less. You may have heard from various other teams that Sri Lanka is a difficult place to play. Going into a country like England maybe we got to concentrate on the middle overs and probably the top order batting. You learn by experience. You should be prepared to do experiments.

"On seamer friendly wickets if you safeguard your wicket for a while it would do you good. It depends on the country that you play, the attack that you are facing and the wicket that you are playing on. Generally we need to keep improving in all three areas."

Atapattu said that he would still go for seven batsmen in a one-day side unless the conditions forced a change. He said the absence of any warm-up games ahead of the two Tests against Pakistan has given less opportunity to fringe players to make any impact for selection. Sri Lanka will open their tour against Pakistan at Karachi on October 6. They play Pakistan and Zimbabwe twice each before the final on October 16 at Lahore after which they go straight into the two Test series starting at Faisalabad on October 20 and at Karachi on October 28.