Kusal Perera ruled out of Zimbabwe tour

Sri Lanka’s explosive batsman Kusal Perera had picked up a hamstring injury in the recently concluded Champions Trophy 2017, after which he is yet to regain complete fitness, and thus he won’t be a part of the Sri Lanka team that takes on Zimbabwe in the home series. Zimbabwe are scheduled to tour the Island country in June and July to play one Test match and five One-Day Internationals (ODIs).

The schedule originally was for two Test matches and three ODIs but was modified later. Zimbabwe last toured Sri Lanka in January 2002. The left-handed batsman registered scores of 44* and 47* against South Africa and India respectively at the Champions Trophy before he suffered the injury and was subsequently ruled out of the game against Pakistan. He was later replaced by Dhananjaya de Silva.

Perera has not been named in the squad for the first two ODIs against Zimbabwe. Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews said that he is not very fit for the series against India as well. “Kusal Perera is out for the whole series. The physiotherapist says it’s 8 to 12 weeks if I’m not mistaken. He’s also ‘touch & go’ for the Indian series as well so we will have to closely monitor him.” Mathews said.

Perera had suffered a similar injury earlier in 2017 during a practice game in Sri Lanka which ruled him out of the Bangladesh ODIs home series.

3 spinners in the squad 

Meanwhile, left-arm spinner Amila Aponso has been added to the ODI squad for the first two games in Galle. With his inclusion, Matthews now has 3 frontline spinners to select from.

With Aponso’s inclusion, the current squad is extended to 14 players and skipper Mathews will have three frontline spinners to choose from.

“All three spinners I have, Amila Aponso, Lakshan Sandakan and Akila Dananjaya are very quality spinners. We will take a look at the pitch tomorrow morning and take a call on who will play.” Mathews said at the pre-match press conference.