Sanath Jayasuriya feels Dinesh Chandimal should go back to play club cricket

This trend of host teams nailing the visitors rolling out pitches that suit them and are extremely difficult for the opposition is a prevailing trend in international cricket at the moment. While the Asian teams have struggled big time against the moving ball in England, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand same has been the case when the overseas teams have come in the subcontinent. Very recently the Sri Lankan team was handed a drubbing in the Test as well as ODI series by the Proteas.

The Lankan lost the Test series 3-0 and the score line in the ODI series was 5-0. Chairman of selectors Sanath Jayasuriya was though disappointed with the results maintained that if the South African team tours Sri Lanka they will be served a dose of their own medicine. “Some of the wickets during the series were very difficult,” Jayasuriya was quoted by Cricbuzz as saying. “You can say that. If we were exposed to wickets with grass, we have to pay them back with the same coin preparing conditions suited for us.”

He explained that he is not trying to cover up for the poor performance of his team but some of the pitches dished out were too tough for the inexperienced visiting players to bat on. “I am not trying to give excuses and I admit we played bad cricket. We should be up for any challenge. But having said that, I must mention that I have never seen so much of grass in South Africa especially when it comes to one-day cricket.”

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“In ODIs, you generally get wickets that are good for batting. Port Elizabeth, for example, is the slowest wicket in South Africa, but this time I found they had left lot of grass,” Jayasuriya added.

“We were exposed to tougher realities. This is going to be the future of one-day cricket. There’s so much at stake with rankings and stuff and teams will prepare conditions that suits their teams. So the important thing is for us to prepare for the challenges ahead as well as we could”

The Sri Lankan batsmen failed big time including the likes of Dinesh Chandimal who is their most experienced batter but couldn’t stand up against the Protea bowlers and give spine to the batting lineup. Jayasuriya felt the bowlers did a decent job though weren’t as consistent as the team would have liked.

“The main problem was that our batsmen failed to make big scores. There was hardly anything for us as far as the conditions were concerned during the Tests. I thought our bowlers did a decent job, but again consistency was lacking. In ODIs, the positives were the way Niroshan Dickwella batted while Asela Gunaratne was the find of the tour.

“I must say that towards the end of the ODI series we did improve. To posted 327 in the fourth ODI and then to score 296 in the final game was satisfying.” The former skipper said.

He also added that Chandimal has to work on his game and should look to get the basics right, go back to the drawing board play club cricket and find his way back. “Chandimal should go back to club cricket. “He should work his game out. This is not the first time he has gone through a tough patch. He has to be mentally very strong. You can’t think of failure all the time. Have a chat to the computer analyst, find out what’s going wrong and come back stronger. These are tough times for him. You find media and social media going after you and you have to keep these things aside and concentrate on your cricket.”

While not a lot of positives were there for them in the series, the way stand-in skipper Upul Tharanga responded should definitely give the team a lot of hope for a better future. “It was tough on Upul. We missed Angelo due to injury and Chandimal, the vice-captain, was not getting any runs. So we asked Upul to lead the team and then we asked him to bat up in the order. I thought he handled things really well,” he concluded.