Test minnows Ireland faces another trial by spin

Sri Lanka Captain Dimuth Karunaratne with his two principal spinners Ramesh Mendis and Prabath Jayasuriya

Head Coach Chris Silverwood watches rookie leg-spinner Dushan Hemantha bowling at practice at the Galle International Cricket Stadium yesterday

Irish Coach Gary Wilson in conversation with fast bowler Mark Adair who has been ruled out of today’s game

Ireland will look to one of their most experienced red ball cricketers Paul Stirling to uplift their batting

• Second Cricket Test begins at Galle today
• Ireland strengthened by inclusion of Stirling, Hume

Ireland faced another trial by spin with Sri Lanka looking to include a third spinner into their bowling attack – rookie leg-spinner Dushan Hemantha in their eleven for today’s second Cricket Test at the Galle International Cricket Stadium.

Sri Lanka went to the first Test with a balanced attack of two seamers and two spinners, but on the spin-oriented Galle surface the seamers Vishwa Fernando and Asitha Fernando bowled only a total of 21 overs in the entire match. Vishwa with his left-arm seam was the most effective of the two getting the initial breakthrough for his team in both innings. As for the other seamer Asitha he was virtually reduced to a passenger sending down eight overs for 25 runs in the match.

Spinners Prabath Jayasuriya and Ramesh Mendis dominated the Ireland innings taking 15 wickets between them and the chances are that with the extra seamer being of no use on the turning tracks of Galle, 28-year-old uncapped leg-spinner Dushan Hemantha being given his first Test cap is a possibility. Hemantha, is a bowling all-rounder who can also bat (he has three first-class hundreds to his name with a highest score of 193) and 98 first-class wickets from 44 matches. He impressed against England Lions bowling Sri Lanka ‘A’ to a 2-1 series win in the unofficial ODIs taking 11 wickets at a cost of 11.45.

Sri Lanka Head Coach Chris Silverwood was rather noncommittal in his choice of words when asked whether there would be any changes to the side that won the first Test by an innings and 280 runs inside three days to take a 1-0 lead in the two-match series.

“It’s difficult to change a winning team as the guys played so well in the last game. I thought it was a disciplined team performance,” said Silverwood at the pre-match press conference yesterday. “Good to see batsmen get runs under their belt. Obviously, the bowlers did their job well, with the new ball as well as the spinners. It’s difficult to change such a team. Yet, there are few things to finalise.”

When it was pointed out that the two seamers bowled only a limited number of overs in the entire match, Silverwood replied, “There are so many things that we have to consider. The pacers didn’t bowl much in the last game and that’s not very unusual here. Having been involved in a few Test matches here, you often find seamers will have a limited work load. Unfortunately, they don’t bowl the number of overs they used to bowl. Obviously, they back the spinners.”

Expressing his views on Hemantha, Silverwood said: “I’m very impressed with him. I was impressed how he bowled in the Lions’ series. I’m impressed by how he trains and how he moves around the group.”

Silverwood said just because Sri Lanka are playing a team new to Test cricket, they cannot take their opponents lightly.

“It’s the same routine that you normally would. If you don’t take people seriously, that can be dangerous. We have to make sure that it’s a vital game and it’s a great opportunity for us to try and back up some performances.”

“Obviously, if we win the toss, we’d like to bat first but if we’re to bowl first, we’ll have to make sure to keep the runs tight and create chances as much as we can. We need to have discipline in bowling.”

Ireland is determined to put up a much better performance than they did in the first test with two experienced red ball players coming into their side – top order batsman Paul Stirling and South African-born fast bowler Graham Hume who will be playing in his 100th first-class match today.

Irish Coach Gary Wilson said that Hume will replace injured pacie Mark Adair and regarding Stirling’s inclusion stated: “We all know he is a fantastic player. He’s got a lot of red ball experience apart from Graham Hume, probably the most experienced in our eleven. We’ll be looking for him to go out there and do the business for us. His skill level is certainly right up there and hopefully looking for him to do the job.”

“We have a better idea of the conditions. The pitch looks similar. No doubt we want to put on a better batting performance. We are looking to put in a much better performance all round with both bat and ball.”

“We’ve seen that (Prabath) Jayasuriya is an incredibly accurate bowler, but it just comes down to good skilful batting with a good mindset, application and trying to put their bowlers off their lengths a little bit more. Trying to find an application to play as few balls off the front foot is challenging. The stats say that no matter wherever you are in the world if you come here and look to play forward defensive shots you are probably going to get out. That’s not saying that we are not going to have a rock solid defence when it’s needed. There’s been good conversations with all three skills -batting, fast bowling and spin bowling. We’ll be looking to put that into practice over the next five days.”