A lot of emphasis put on physical fitness – Sanath
Lankan cricket chief selector Sanath Jayasuriya feels that it is time they place of a lot of emphasis on the aspect of physical fitness into the national team.
Speaking to the Sunday Times Jayasuriya said “We will be starting our next leg of cricket with the arduous battle of wits with seven one dayers against England from November 28. From that point onwards there is non-stop cricket till the end of World Cup in April. This means physical fitness of individual players would mean a lot to us. We have spelled out our requirements to our trainers Chandrishan Perera and Dharshana Weerasinghe who are working very closely with the squad that is training at present.”
Sri Lanka won the first cricket gold medal in Men’s Twenty20 at the 17th Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea. The women cricketers won the bronze medal
Speaking on the winning of the Asian Games ‘gold’ by the Lankan cricketers Jayasuriya said “Once again we have proved that in Sri Lanka, cricket is the only game that is consistently performing at the highest level in the world arena. A few months ago we won the ICC World T-20 championships, now we have won the Asian Games ‘Gold’. As the selection committee chairman I feel satisfied. Besides I am happy that players like Dinesh Chandimal and Lahiru Thirimanne were in the thick of the activities, however it was a good performance by
the entire team”
Meanwhile off spinner Sachithra Senanayake made a comeback to competitive cricket when he took part in a Mercantile ‘A’ division match yesterday. He bowled eight overs for an economical 34 runs, but, failed bag a wicket.
The ICC who initially banned him from competitive cricket has given the local cricket authorities the prerogative of using him at competitive cricket, if they feel they are comfortable with the results of the remedial work done on the bowler.
A senior insider told the Sunday Times “We have given him the green light to play and we think that his action is much rehabilitated. However during these matches he will be closely monitored by the umpires, who are anyway under instructions to monitor illegal deliveries. If this exercise is successful then we can go in for the next step.”
The ICC last week announced that Cricket Australia’s National Cricket Centre in Brisbane and the Sri Ramachandra University in Chennai have been accredited as testing centres for suspected illegal bowling actions.
However it is also learned that there will be another centre opening in England for the same purpose within the next few weeks and the Lankan authorities now will have a choice of subjecting Senanayake for further Tests by the ICC once they find the bowler has reached satisfactory levels with his bowling action.
Senanayake was initially tested at the Cardiff University, Wales.