Shambles turns to success
SRI Lanka’s historic 2-0 Test series victory over South Africa seemed somewhat fanciful when they arrived in some disarray and on a long losing streak.
However, they leave the Rainbow Nation as the first Asian side to ever win a series in the country.
South Africa had whitewashed Pakistan 3-0 at the start of the year and were on a run of seven home Test series wins in a row, dating back to 2016.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka had been whitewashed 3-0 at home by England at the end of 2018 then lost successive away series in New Zealand and Australia before axing captain Dinesh Chandimal.
In South Africa, they were missing injured talisman Angelo Mathews and had coach Chandika Hathurusingha reportedly at odds with his own board after being removed as an on-tour selector.
So it was little wonder that a buoyant and confident South Africa were odds on to secure a comfortable win.
But after Sri Lanka were able to blast their way to a onewicket victory in the first Test in Durban thanks to a remarkable unbeaten 153 from Kusal Perera in the second innings, they looked the more confident and assured team in the second match, cruising to an eight-wicket win on Saturday.
Dimuth Karunaratne, captaining the team in the series, said the disappointing tours in Australia and New Zealand had laid the platform for their success in South Africa.
“Those two tours were really tough and we learnt a lot of things,” Karunaratne said.
Sri Lanka won the series despite first innings scores of 191 and 154 in the two Test matches, after which the South African batsmen could not capitalise on good batting wickets.