GUNARATNE RULED OUT OF FIRST-TEST WITH FRACTURED THUMB
Sri Lanka’s chances in the First-test against India took a severe dent after it was revealed that allrounder Asela Gunaratne will be out for four-weeks after he suffered a fractured left thumb at the Galle Stadium yesterday.
Sri Lanka Cricket Manager Asanka Gurusinha said it was a tough loss to swallow effectively meaning Sri Lanka would have to play the rest of the match with only 10 players.
“It’s a tough one to lose one of our main players and to play with 10 against the world’s number one,” Gurusinha said.
He said the player was due to have surgery yesterday.
“He will have surgery on his finger. He’ll probably miss a minimum of four weeks. We’ll know in the next 48 hours what the time frame will be. It might be more than that. There are about three pieces and it’s pretty serious. We realised that when we saw the x-ray. So, we sent him to Colombo straightaway,” Gurusinha said.
While Gunaratne has been in form with the bat, Gurusinha believes his contributions as a bowler will also be missed.
“We’re going to have to play with ten. We have played him as batsman but with his bowling we lost that as well. As a batsman he played so well against Zimbabwe and he’s been scoring runs right through. And to lose him is going to put pressure on our middle order but this is where the other players will step up. Dilruwan (Perera) has played at number seven before and scored runs against good sides, even sides like Australia, so I think it’s a responsibility they are going to have to take,” he said.
Gurusinha said wayward bowling on a batting wicket had cost Sri Lanka dearly on the first day.
“We have to be honest. We bowled well in patches. Nuwan Pradeep was probably the most outstanding one out there. But I think it’s a really good batting wicket, and I heard Virat Kohli saying the same thing on Tuesday. It’s a hard toil. We bowled on both sides of the wicket a little bit but we came back and tried to control it. But I think Shikhar Dhawan took over the game and scoring that 190 is one of the reasons we’re in this position,” he added.