Rangana Herath hails India for their dominating show at Galle

Sri Lanka skipper Rangana Herath heaped praise on the victorious Indian side after they went one up in the ongoing series. Herath, who acted as the skipper, in the absence of Dinesh Chandimal, said that the Indians outclassed them in all three departments of the game.

However, Herath said that Sri Lanka did not play to their full potential. According to the bowler, the side will focus on improving themselves and delivering results on the pitch from the next game.

“You can’t be satisfied with a defeat. We bowled badly, fielded badly and batted badly in the first innings. We are a better team than that. We need to find out how we can do better than this moving forward,” said Herath.

“When you lose a game you are disappointed. But having said that, all credit to India for the way they played. They played outstanding cricket in all three departments. They deserve all the credit,” he added.

Sri Lanka suffered a huge blow on first day’s play as Asela Gunaratne was left injured with a fractured thumb. The player had to be rushed to the hospital and will not be a part of the series anymore. Herath himself picked up an injury during the match and did not come out to bat in the second inning. Herath pointed out that Asela’s injury will be absolutely crucial for the Lions.

On losing Gunaratne:

“Losing Asela was a massive blow for us and he will be out for eight weeks. He has been scoring lot of runs for us in the last few months. He wasn’t available to bat or bowl and that was a huge blow for us,” he said. “I had swelling because I had fracture three years ago in the same area. About Dinesh Chandimal, there’s no confirmation, but I expect him to play the next game,” added the stand-in skipper.

Rangana Herath appreciated the stellar knock played by Shikhar Dhawan in the first innings and said that it slowly snatched the game away from them. Herath claimed that Sri Lanka could not execute their plans perfectly.

“We had a few plans for him but we failed to execute. If you take for example we allowed him too much of width. In the first session of the match itself the game started slipping away from us,” he said. “We bounced back well but he had by then got off to a terrific start. Some of our plans went very well but we were not 100 per cent perfect. That’s the reason they went onto post 600 runs in their first innings,” said Herath.

On the Galle pitch:

The 39-year-old also blamed the Galle pitch for not helping the spinners. He said that though the pitch was a batsman friendly one, he had expected it to come good for the spinners on the 4^th and the 5^th day.

“I told before the game too that this pitch will help batsmen a lot. Having said that, I expected the spinners to come into the equation in the fourth or fifth day. But this wicket didn’t have much help for spinners either. “Our wickets are different from each other. We expect a bit of turn in Galle. But there’s no point in blaming anyone after you lose. The plain truth is that we didn’t play well and we are to be blamed,” said Hearth.