Dimuth worried about team’s red-ball form
Sri Lanka captain Dimuth Karunaratne confessed playing only the fifth Test series since December, that too, after a lapse of six months after the last tour would be a daunting task for the entire team and not only for the four senior names returning to action today.
Karunaratne, in his last appearance in the Test kit against Bangladesh, hit his maiden double ton, posting a career-best 244. However, he defended himself, there is no assurance that such knocks can be repeated.
“Last series, I got plenty of runs, but this time, it’s not guaranteed if I can make runs here. After months, I’m playing in an international game. Yes, I want to get some runs here, and have been working hard in the last few months. Hopefully, I can make a big one and a 300. We’ll see how it goes,” he told reporters yesterday, in the virtual pre-match media briefing ahead of the match.
“We are returning after a long lapse and with great difficulty. Why, because, we were out of action for a prolonged period and Covid-19 also made matters worse in the training places. But, nevertheless, we have made the most of all the training sessions we got and in fact, trained and warmed up for five days on the trot,” he said of the build-up for this year’s penultimate Test.
Making a comeback to the test format longer than the time the team had taken is – veteran Dinesh Chandimal – likely to be the wicketkeeper/batsman. His fellow skipper welcomed his return to the side, in the absence of the suspended gloveman Niroshan Dickwella, and was hoping to make use of the former’s exposure as an experienced campaigner.
“Batting-wise there are a lot of inputs we can gain from him, because he has milked a lot of runs in here,” he backed his past skipper.
Responding to whether it will be the traditional spin-friendly track of Galle, where spin will be of mainstay, he agreed, “Of course, it does look like a spinning wicket, that is why we want to play three spinners and there is something with the breeze. Hence, we can get something for the fast bowlers”. The left-hander justified the team combination reasoning out, they need to cover all bases of the bowling line-up, rotate the bowlers and pick up all 20-wickets to win the match.