Former Sri Lankan skipper and chief selector Sanath Jayasuriya has urged the players to take responsibility to avoid injuries after they returned from the disastrous tour of England.
The Sri Lankan team’s chances in the recently concluded series in England were severely hit due to a number of injuries. Senior pacer Lasith Malinga and leg-spinner Jeffrey Vandersay were ruled out due to injuries even before the squad was named, then Dhammika Prasad, Dushmantha Chameera, were forced to pull out of the series during the early phase of the tour.
Sri Lankan captain Angelo Mathews too was not fully fit and was unable to bowl during some parts of the ODI series. Milinda Siwiwardana also got injured which ruled him out of the third Test.
Assessing the situation, Sri Lanka’s new high-performance manager Simon Willis had said that situations like these could be avoided if squads were named early, and conditioning work was undertaken before the tours begin. Partially agreeing with Simon Willis, Jayasuriya said that commitments from players are also necessary to avoid injuries.
“Simon Willis is right in one sense, but my concern is that injuries have been happening for some time,” Jayasuriya said. “We also need the commitment from the players. You can’t deny that also. I’m saying that in front of the players. They have to come out of their comfort zone and train.
“No matter how much myself, Simon and Sri Lanka Cricket are committed, if the player isn’t committed, you can’t do it. I’m not saying they are not committed – they are committed – but they need to do something different to come out and solve this issue.”
Sri Lanka remained winless throughout the tour. They suffered a 2-0 defeat in the Test series ,lost the ODI series 3-0 and a defeat in the one-off Twenty20 International (T20I). Their bowling looked really weak in the ODI series where English batsmen scored runs at will. In fact, their bowling has looked weak quite for some time now. The situation will get only worse for them as Malinga is still recovering from the injury, Chameera has suffered a stress reaction that could see him out of action for as many as four months.
“There could be a lot of cricket for sure,” Jayasuriya said. “Then you have to pick the tour and say: ‘I will be playing on this particular tour’. If there’s too much cricket, then the player has to say: ‘I’m not going to last long’, and stay out. Then we can think of something else.”
“If we can get the same players playing through a series, there will be a difference,” Jayasuriya said. “Unlike when the tour started, by their fourth innings in the Tests, the batsmen were able to score 475. That’s because the same batting unit stayed together. But the bowlers break down from match to match. If we can stop that, we can get to a good place. In the end, only Nuwan Pradeep and Suranga Lakmal were left from the bowlers who started the tour, and even Lakmal, in the last match, had a knee injury.”