Lanka send SoS to Sandy Gordon

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka have hired leading sports psychologist Sandy Gordon to try and arrest the team’s plummeting confidence ahead of a difficult triangular series against Australia and South Africa.

The team have lost eight out of their last nine one-day internationals and suffered series defeats to India and New Zealand in the process, causing the side to fall from second to sixth in the sport’s official ODI rankings.

‘’We are in serious trouble,’’ Sri Lanka Cricket’s chief executive Duleep Mendis said at a news conference on Wednesday. ‘’I can see the body language and it’s clear the team has lost confidence. Mentally they are down.’’

Sri Lanka have confirmed the hiring of South African Gordon, one of the world’s most respected sports psychologists, for two sessions in Melbourne in January 9 and also in Perth in the first week of February.‘’We have to give the players back the confidence because we are approaching the World Cup (in early 2007),’’ Mendis told the media. ‘It is a very important time. Hopefully, we will benefit out of  it.’’