Sri Lanka to call in Chamika Karunaratne for second Test?
As Sri Lanka look for a clean sweep of the two-match Test series against West Indies, they are likely to bring in bowling all-rounder Chamika Karunaratne in place of Dushmantha Chameera for the final match starting Monday at the spin-friendly Galle cricket ground.
Although they included two frontline seamers in Suranga Lakmal and Dushmantha Chameera for the opening game, it was the three-man spin attack that undid the West Indian batters to give Sri Lanka a comfortable 187-run win in the first Test.
Out of the 164.5 overs Sri Lanka bowled, the two seamers shared only 18 overs between them with spinners doing the bulk of the work on a slow turning pitch, collecting 19 out of the 20 West Indian wickets.
Accordingly, the selectors have decided to rest Dushmantha Chameera for the final game and to replace him with Karunaratne who can add value as a lower-order batter. His inclusion comes ahead of Charith Asalanka, who they were considering to hand debut in a bid to strengthen the batting but the team’s think-tank believes there needs to be two pacies to share the new ball in the event Sri Lanka loses the toss.
“Most probably we will go with Chamika,” a team source confirmed.
“True, the seamers had little to do in the first Test but we need to be prepared to bowl first in the event they win the toss and elected to bat first.”
Chamika made his Test debut back in February 2019, claiming Australia’s Marnus Labuschagne as his maiden Test wicket. Since then, he has only featured in white-ball cricket.
Thursday’s win came on the back of a fine batting performance by skipper Dimuth Karunaratne who scored 147 and 83 runs in the two innings before their three-man spin attack of Ramesh Mendis (7/139), Lasith Embuldeniya (6/113) and Praveen Jayawickrema (5/68) ran amok to give Sri Lanka a comprehensive win.
Despite the win, skipper Dimuth Karunaratne believes there is still room for improvement to give a complete performance.
“Batting against spin is an area we can improve on,” he said.
“Yes, we employed the sweep and reverse sweep effectively in the first Test but there’s still room for improvement in that aspect. If you take fielding, we can be a bit sharper in close catching which could make the difference in this kind of wickets. In bowling, I think we need to get our line and lengths right. If we get these sorted out, I am sure we can put on a complete performance.”
The win gave Sri Lanka 12 points in the ICC Test Championship and a series win is all that they are expecting to make a perfect start to the new championships cycle.