Angelo Mathews confident of Shaminda Eranga's comeback

Sri Lankan skipper Angelo Mathews spoke about his fellow teammate, Shaminda Eranga’s comeback into the squad. Eranga was hospitalized with a heart ailment in England on Sunday and later on in the day, he was suspended from bowling in international cricket by the ICC after his bowling action was found to be illegal.

Mathews said that, while the team was warming up for the 2nd ODI, Eranga complained of uneasiness to him. “At the time, he called me and said ‘something has happened to me’,” Mathews said. “He was warming up and just before we went on the field, he said something happened to me, can you touch my heart because it is beating fast. I felt something unusual so I quickly called the physio and the physio went for the doctor with him. It was a shocking incident.”

Eranga was soon taken to the hospital as his heartbeat was recorded at a high 220 beats per minute and is currently discharged after getting the clearance from the doctors to fly back home.

“It has been a tough 48 hours for him,” Mathews said, “And the whole team is behind him and we are fully supportive of him. It was an unfortunate incident just before we went on to the field.”

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The 29-year old feels confident that the fast bowler will come back strong from his condition as well as his bowling action. Speaking about his bowling action, the skipper said, “It’s another unfortunate incident where his action has proved to be illegal and he will have to go back and work with the fast-bowling coaches and come back strong.”

“We are very confident he will come through both – his condition as well as his action – so we are very supportive of him and the whole team are behind him,” he added.

Sri Lanka lost the Test series against England quite convincingly, but they had shown some signs of improvement in the third Test at Lord’s. They have also beaten Ireland in the two-ODI series and are looking forward to the 5-match ODI series.

Also read: Shaminda Eranga suspended from bowling in international cricket

“It was pretty unfortunate that we haven’t performed well in the Test series but we kept improving game by game and as time went on we really started hitting our straps and we had some convincing wins in Ireland,” he said.

“But England is a completely different team, we still have to play our best cricket to beat them here. We haven’t done well in the recent past but we’ve played a lot of T20 games rather than one-dayers. We are a forceful unit when it comes to one-dayers, we’ve got a good set of guys and a bit of experience,” he concluded.