The injury curse that left Sri Lanka severely depleted during their tour of England has still not gone away as pacer Suranga Lakmal’s participation in the first Test against Australia at Pallekele is in doubts as he has still not recovered from a hamstring injury. They are already deprived of the services of pacers – Dhammika Prasad , Dushmantha Chameera and Shaminda Eranga. Leg spinner Jeffrey Vandersay is also recovering from an injury.
Sri Lankan skipper Angelo Mathews expressed his frustration over the situation.
“It has been a very frustrating few months. Not only one bowler, we’ve lost so many,” Mathews said on Monday (July 25). “Vandersay is one of our key bowlers in the spin department. It’s very frustrating to see them going down. The workload has been very high when they play all three formats. When they play continuously, the body eventually gets tired. It’s very hard to divide those players when it comes to Tests, one-dayers and Twenty20s. We haven’t got a wide range of choices to make and pick from. The bowlers who are fit – they’ve got no choice but to play all three formats.”
The all-rounder said that the coaches will have to play a bigger role in this crisis situation. Mathews said that the backup staff should try to bring in new players to help the team in tough situations like this.
“The coaches in the back end have to do a lot of work to produce players, and also try to get them fit. We need more players coming through the ranks, so the coaches have a bigger job to play for the next one-and-a-half years. If the fast bowlers are injured, we need fast bowlers. At the international level, I can’t go as a captain and say we don’t have bowlers. If we don’t have them, we need to know how to produce them.
“Actually, as backup staff, we need to try and look for more new players and get them ready and fit. We can’t always keep saying, ‘the bowlers are injured, we haven’t got that many bowlers’. We need to try and find them if we don’t have them.”
However, Mathews expressed his satisfaction over the batting department. Praising their performances during the England tour, Mathews said that if the openers can see out the Australian pacers then his team can get an ideal situation to score big scores.
“I’m actually happy with the current opening pair,” he pointed out. “Especially in England – in tough conditions – I thought they put up some good efforts. All the batsmen lacked getting those big hundreds. If we can be more consistent and convert those 30s, 40s and 50s into 100s and 150s, that would be ideal. Our opening combination is going to be the key part of our batting unit. If they can get the shine off the ball and try and send the bowlers into their second and third spells, that would be ideal.”