Atapattu: 'our batsmen lost it'

Marvan Atapattu blamed his batsmen after Sri Lanka had slumped to a five-wicket defeat against Australia in the third ODI in Colombo. "It all went wrong at the start," he admitted. "We should have ended up with 30 or 40 more runs on a good batting track.

"It was a great innings by Mahela [Jayawardene] and the lower order batsmen to get us to 226 at the end, and then [Chaminda] Vaas gave us a great start with those early wickets. At that moment we had a sniff but Martyn and Ponting then batted superbly. When the ball got soft and started turning at the end we also had another chance as the run-rate crept up to 6.5 per over. If only we had grabbed a couple more wickets."

Atapattu also noted that the Australians had played Muttiah Muralitharan with a lot of confidence, but argued that the wicket had not turned like a normal Premadasa pitch. "The next match is obviously crucial if we are going to stay in the series," he said, "and we will try to win that."

Australia's captain, Ricky Ponting, was extremely pleased with his side's victory. "We bowled the right lengths and had them under pressure," he said. "When you dare bowling like that it can look like there is more happening in the wicket than there actually is. I think it was a pretty good wicket and I think we would have got a few more than 227 if we had batted on it first.

"I don't think Murali is bowling that badly," he added. "I just think we are playing him pretty well. Our approach to him has been spot-on so far. No wickets for 90-odd runs in the last couple of games has been a great result for us. Most of our batsmen are picking him and playing him pretty well and hopefully we can do that again on Friday."

Ponting was full of praise for Andrew Symonds after he had steered Australia to the win. "He is playing beautifully and it is exciting to think that he could be in the Test line-up. He plays the spinners well and if they bowl a bad ball he is going to hit it. To have someone like him around is good for the team."