Sri Lanka name 15-man squad for the T20Is against India

Sri Lankan selectors announced the 15-man squad for the three-match Twenty20 International series against India. Thisara Perera who led the team in the T20I series against Pakistan will captain the Lankans against Team India. Though his captaincy debut wasn’t quite memorable, the 1st ODI win against India did boost his chances of being retained for longer.

In a major exclusion veteran pacer Lasith Malinga didn’t find favour from the selectors. He was earlier also excluded from the team for the series against Pakistan in the UAE for the ODI as well as T20I series since he wasn’t willing to travel to Lahore for the last match.

The selectors also decided to rest pacer Suranga Lakmal who played all the three Tests and is with the team for the ODIs as well. Along with him batsmen Lahiru Thirimanne and Dhananjaya de Silva have also been kept out of the T20I squad. The two who will take their place are Dasun Shanaka, Vishwa Fernando.

Having recovered from a recurring knee injury Malinga isn’t his old self anymore and doesn’t look lethal anymore having lost substantial pace behind his delivery. Sri Lanka Cricket in their release maintained that he has been rested but reports suggest that they want to seek new options among younger players who can take up the role and serve the team for longer.

Malinga’s numbers favour him in the shortest format of the game where he has 12 wickets to his name in half the number of matches this calendar year whereas those in 50-over cricket aren’t as promising. He played 13 matches and was able to pick just 10 wickets.

Sri Lanka squad for three-match series:

Thisara Perera (C), Upul Tharanga, Angelo Mathews, Kusal Perera, Danushka Gunathilaka, Niroshan Dickwella (wk), Asela Gunaratne, Sadeera Samarawickrama, Dasun Shanaka, Chaturanga de Silva, Sachith Pathirana, Dananjaya de Silva, Nuwan Pradeep, Vishwa Fernando, Dushmantha Chameera

The T20I series gets underway on December 20 in Cuttack.