Sangakkara: Sri Lanka need to do more work

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka:

Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara wants his teammates to "keep their heads down'' ahead of the World Cup final at Mumbai on Saturday.

Sri Lanka defeated New Zealand by five wickets in the semi-final on Tuesday and will meet India in the deciding match.

"We are not worried about who is there, we are more worried about preparing for the final,'' Sangakkara said. "Kicking off from here is easy to get carried away.

"We need to keep our heads down and keep playing good cricket and understand that there's a lot of work to do in the next three days to play in the biggest match of our lives.''

Sangakkara scored 54 and shared a 120-run second wicket partnership with top-scorer Tillakaratne Dilshan (73) before Sri Lanka stuttered in pursuit of their 218-run target.

Sri Lanka lost four wickets in space of 25 runs before Thilan Samaraweera and Angelo Mathews added 35 off 33 balls to guide the team to 220-5 in 47.5 overs.

"We got tense towards the end,'' Sangakkara said. "Basically because Dilshan and I should have finished it off or got us close to the 200-run mark.

"We let that opportunity go and put the side under a bit of pressure ... being two down with 60 runs to go we should have been a bit clinical, but probably in hindsight it was good for middle order (batsmen) to show us what they can do as well.''

Sri Lanka won their only World Cup in 1996 and were beaten by Australia in the last World Cup final in the West Indies.

Sangakkara said Sri Lanka missed a great opportunity in 2007, but had a chance to "recreate those opportunities in 2011". He said qualifying for a third final in 10 World Cups meant a lot to the country of 20 million.

"That's what we have planned for two years, once we finished 2007 you know we missed a great opportunity then.''

Sangakkara's men twice successfully chased down targets in two knockout stage matches at R. Premadasa Stadium on a relaid wickets where once achieving targets under floodlights was a difficult task.

The Sri Lanka captain said chasing always enhanced the confidence of the team in big tournaments like the World Cup.

"Chasing and winning does a lot more to your confidence than batting first and defending,'' he said. "We just need to see for ourselves how well we do in chasing - and chasing in two crunch games was special.''