Despite Sri Lanka not being in the run for semifinal qualification, head coach Mickey Arthur was effusive in his praise for the team’s achievement in the tournament on the eve of their final game – against West Indies – in Abu Dhabi.

The 2014 champions had to take the longer route to get to the Super 12s this time, but arrived there with big, clinical wins over Namibia, Ireland and Netherlands in the first round of fixtures. In the Super 12s too, they carried forward seamlessly, starting off with a five-wicket victory over Bangladesh.

But that has been followed with three successive defeats that has put them out of the reckoning, but has given Arthur immense confidence of what the future holds for this team in the T20 format. Even in the defeats, the fight and performances of the younger group of players have come as a silver lining.

“We’ve shaken up the World Cup,” Arthur said in a press conference on Wednesday (November 3). “We’re not going to qualify this year. But Sri Lankan cricket is now in good hands. We’ve got some very good young players who just need consistency in message. They need consistency in selection. And they need to be given a platform to go and play. So I’m immensely proud of the efforts of the players, immensely proud of the efforts of the support staff who put in a massive amount of work with these players.

“I’d like to say we’ve just planted the seeds because I think in a year or two’s time those seeds will start to turn into some pretty good flowers. Sri Lankan cricket is in a healthy state with this bunch of young players.”

“For me to see how far we’ve come as a group, when I watch Pathum Nissanka, Charith Asalanka, Dushmantha Chameera, Wanindu Hasranga, Maheesh Theekshana, Dasun Shanaka, Chamika Karunaratne, you can name eight or nine players, when I watch them perform, I get immensely proud because I know how much they’ve put into it,” he added.

Arthur reckoned his team ‘turned a corner’ as he came into the World Cup thinking T20 was Sri Lanka’s worst format. “I said before the campaign I thought Twenty20 was our worst format. We know we’re in a building phase as a cricket nation. We’ve turned the corner. I certainly think our test team’s in a good place. I think our one-day team is getting there. It was the Twenty20 team that worried me a little bit.

Arthur also repeatedly reiterated the need for Sri Lanka to achieve consistency – and not just on the field – to find rise to the next level. In the last few years, Sri Lanka’s knee-jerk reactions to unfavourable results have had severe ramifications on team selections, which have in turn impacted players. Arthur felt if the players are given a fair run in the side, it will hold Sri Lankan cricket in good stead going forward.

“For these young players, there’s a very bright future ahead of them. As I said so many times, we’ve just got to be consistent with them and we’re going to get, hopefully, we’ll get some consistent performances later down the line.

“I’m just striving for consistency in everything that we do. And that’s execution, messaging and selection. And then I think that we will go a long way with the resources that we have. I’m looking for that extra little bit of depth in every department. And then we’ll start really challenging the good side. The key for me is consistency. So it’s consistency in the messaging. It’s consistency in the selection,” Arthur said.

Besides such positives, Sri Lanka’s World Cup campaign is perhaps best summed up by a nagging feeling of ‘what if?’. Australia were their only Super 12 opponent who outplayed them in a seven-wicket victory, as Sri Lanka had chances to seize against South Africa and England.

Wanindu Hasaranga, Sri Lanka’s best performer in the tournament, had South Africa on the mat at 112 for 6 in the 18th over in their chase of 142, before David Miller swung his way to a late victory. Sri Lanka showed admirable gumption against one of the best sides in the tournament – England. Hasaranga (nearly) turned protagonist again as he dwarfed the chase equation from 75 off 42 to 41 off 24. But his dismissal in the 17th over allowed England to swoop in and maintain their unbeaten run.

“I guess the thing that I’ll always look back on this World Cup at is I know we’re a young team. But we had chances. We had opportunities. Certainly to beat South Africa. And we had an opportunity to certainly beat England,” Arthur said. “And those missed opportunities, I think, are going to be the thing that holds me at the end of it when I look back.

“The guys are absolutely shattered. They’ve given their all for this campaign. We’ve been on the road for a long time. We’ve been in bubbles for, I think I worked it out, the last 11 months we’ve been in bubbles for about 240 days now. And these guys are shattered mentally and physically. But they’re up for tomorrow because they want to end on a high,” Arthur added.

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