Hamilton conditions do not favour Black Caps – Mathews

Angelo Mathews does not agree that a green wicket for the second Test in Hamilton will favour New Zealand and believes Sri Lanka have a great chance of drawing the series.

Sri Lanka interim head coach Jerome Jayaratne said he felt the track at Seddon Park had been “doctored” to offer an advantage to the Black Caps, who are aiming for a 2-0 whitewash after winning the first Test in Dunedin by 122 runs.

But Sri Lanka captain Mathews insists it is up to the tourists’ seamers to take advantage of the conditions and the batsmen to apply themselves.

“When you play on extreme wickets, both teams have equal opportunities,” all-rounder Mathews said.

“It’s just that you have to get a good start whether you bat or bowl. We’ll definitely play to win because it doesn’t matter if we lose the series 2-0 by trying to win this game.

“If we are to have a chance of winning, we should play on a wicket like this, because our seamers will also get assistance. We have a very good chance.

“It’s just a matter of applying ourselves while batting and putting runs on the board. That will give our bowlers a chance.

“If we bowl first we will definitely look to rectify the mistakes that we did in Dunedin, because we were nowhere near our best there. We’ve talked about it a lot.

“The bowlers have a very good understanding of what they have to do. We actually had assistance on that pitch but we didn’t bowl well.

“Then we let them off the hook and once they got to 400 it was really tough for us to get back into the game. This pitch will do a lot more than Dunedin. It has a lot more grass.”

The second Test gets begins on Friday.