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Lankan spin threat (from left): Praveen Jayawickrama, Lakshitha Rasanjana, Jeffrey Vandersay, Lasith Embuldeniya, Dunith Wellalage and Ramesh Mendis
The Australian cricketer’s warm-up before a practice session in the backdrop of the historic Galle Fort in preparation for today’s first cricket Test against Sri Lanka
Rival captains Dimuth Karunaratne and Pat Cummins with the Warne-Muralitharan trophy for which the Test series will be contested for
By Sa’adi Thawfeeq reporting from Galle
Sri Lanka’s success in the two-Test match series played for the Warne-Muralitharan trophy starting at the picturesque Galle International Cricket Stadium will depend largely on how their young spin brigade performs on the turning pitches.
The Lankan spinners who performed so poorly in Bangladesh will be put to the test by Australia’s batsmen who are fresh from a series win in Pakistan.
Specialist spinners Lasith Embuldeniya, Ramesh Mendis and Praveen Jayawickrama took two wickets between them whilst conceding 451 runs in the two Tests against Bangladesh. If Sri Lanka hope to repeat the success they had against Australia in 2016 when they swamped them 3-0, these spinners will have to certainly uplift their performance.
However, on that occasion Sri Lanka had an experienced pair of spinners in Rangana Herath and Dilruwan Perera who between them took 43 of the 58 wickets that fell. The total experience of the current trio is 27 Test matches in toto which does not say much in terms of aptitude.
“Our spinners couldn’t perform well in Bangladesh, we found out what our shortcomings were to rectify it before the next series. Our spin bowling coach Piyal Wijetunge has worked hard with our spinners. When I batted in the nets, I noticed that there was some improvement. I think they will fulfil the job for me in the series,” said Sri Lanka Test skipper Dimuth Karunaratne at the pre-match press conference yesterday.
Karunaratne accepted the fact that the current crop of spinners are nowhere close to the experience that Herath and Perera had when they routed Australia six years ago.
“Yes, there is a gap but we have home advantage,” said Karunaratne. “What we need to do is to bowl in the right places on these wickets. That is what experienced bowlers like Rangana and Dilruwan did and constantly troubled the batsmen. If we do these things right, whether we have experience or not will matter that much.”
“I don’t want to mention any names but there are three spinners who can play that role. Lasith Embuldeniya, Ramesh Mendis and Praveen Jayawickrama have very good experience bowling in these conditions and we also have (Jeffrey) Vandersay. These bowlers are capable of doing the job that Rangana Herath did. I am sure they can do it.”
Karunaratne also hinted of playing a wrist spinner and in that context uncapped Vandersay may come into play at the expense of one of the two left-arm spinners – Embuldeniya and Jayawickrama.
“The wrist spinner has more control on these tracks. They may leak some runs but the leg-spinners are wicket taking options. We also have an option to use one.”
With Sri Lanka more or less likely to go with three specialist spinners in their line-up, there is room only for one fast bowler which most likely go to Asitha Fernando who bowled superbly in the last Test played by Sri Lanka against Bangladesh in Mirpur last month taking a 10-fer match bag.
“If you take the previous series, we used only one fast bowler. These conditions are not helpful to them. We are thinking of going with three spinners with one fast bowler. Dhananjaya (de Silva) can also bowl a bit. We’ll look at the wicket tomorrow and decide on the final 11,” said Karunaratne.
With Pathum Nissanka fit again (he had to miss the Bangladesh tour due to a back injury) he will open the batting with Karunaratne which means that there is no place for Oshada Fernando who scored a fifty in his last Test and partnered Karunaratne in an opening stand of 95.
“Pathum went out of the squad because of injury, now that he is fit you have to give him back his place, so Oshada will have to sit it out,” said Karunaratne. “As a captain I am happy to have a strong bench not only for the opening slot but for each and every position. We can always fall back on someone equally competent in case there is a gap to be filled.”
With the exception of Nissanka, Sri Lanka’s batting will probably remain the same as in the last Test against Bangladesh which they won by 10 wickets. The two openers will be followed by Kusal Mendis, Angelo Mathews, Dhananjaya de Silva, Dinesh Chandimal and Niroshan Dickwella followed by the four bowlers.
Sri Lanka are going into the Test series on the back of a remarkable 3-2 ODI series win over Australia.
“The boys’ confidence has been boosted by that win. It’s like mental confidence. We also won our last Test series against Bangladesh. The players are in pretty good shape and high in confidence. That is one of the plus factors for us going into the Test series,” said Karunaratne, who is looking to emulate what the white ball team did.
“Our people always love cricket. For the Sri Lankans it’s like a religion, so we want to give something back to them as well. The one-day boys did really well so hopefully we can also do it against Australia and also the Pakistan series as well.”
Australia are planning to go with an unchanged side that beat Pakistan by 115 runs in Lahore to win the three-match series 1-0 in March, provided that Travis Head recovers from his injury (hamstring), if not the change will be Glenn Maxwell.
Australian skipper Pat Cummins’ response to Sri Lanka’s over emphasis on spin said: “These conditions, I think Sri Lanka play really well over here. It’s quite different to what we experience in Australia. That’s the challenge of trying to win overseas. A lot of our preparation work has been around trusting our own methods. We might go about it a little bit differently to Sri Lanka will. They’re going to pose a challenge but we are up for it.”
