Lahiru Thirimanne and Dasun Shanaka will lead ODI and T20 teams to Pakistan

Lahiru Thirimanne and Dasun Shanaka will lead the Sri Lanka ODI and T20 teams to Pakistan after several senior players including ODI skipper Dimuth Karunaratne and T20 skipper Lasith Malinga pulled out of the tour citing security reasons.

Sri Lanka will play three ODIs and three T20 internationals in Lahore and Karachi-- a decade after the Sri Lankan team was ambushed by gunmen in 2009.

Angelo Mathews, Suranga Lakmal, Dananjaya de Silva, Kusal  Janith Perera, Akila Dananjaya, Dinesh Chandimal, Niroshan Dickwella, and Thisara Perera were among the other senior cricketers to pull out from the tour.

In their absence, the national selectors have appointed two young squads for the series.

In 2017, Sri Lankan cricketers played a single T20 match in Lahore despite a number of high profile pull-outs that had forced the authorities to send a weakened team under Thisara Perera for the three-match series. Sri Lanka lost the series 3-0.

Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has been urging SLC to play the two-match Test series in there but SLC agreed only to a limited-over leg spread over two weeks (3 ODIs and 3 T20s).

Pakistan has promised the sort of “foolproof security” accorded to top VIPs for the players.