Upul Tharanga to lead Sri Lanka in the T20's in Australia

Left-hander Upul Tharanga is set to lead the Sri Lankan side in the T20 series against Australia in the absence of their regular captain Angelo Mathews who still hasn’t fully recuperated from his injury. The appointment of Tharanga was confirmed by Sri Lanka cricket today. After mutual agreement from both Sri Lankan and Australian cricket boards, the International Cricket Council also gave a green signal for the 3T20Is to commence in the month of February.

Tharanga also captained the national team in absence of Mathews during the tri-series in Zimbabwe also involving the Caribbean. Despite Chandimal’s presence in the team during the limited-overs series in South Africa, the Sri Lankan team management has gone for Tharanga as the skipper of the team.

Though he won’t become Sri Lanka’s permanent captain until Mathews is there but he will surely be enjoying his role as a captain of the national side more so when he wasn’t even a regular in the team a few months back.

Tharanga was a permanent member of the Sri Lankan limited overs set up before a loss in form resulted in his ouster from the team. In 196 ODIs, Tharanga has scored 5684 runs at an average of 32. He has also struck 13 centuries in his ODI career along with 30 half-centuries. Besides that, he has appeared in 72 T20Is scoring 1826 runs at a strike rate of 119.84.

Also read: Wriddhiman Saha says switching from T20 to Tests won’t be difficult for him

Sri Lanka’s performance in the recent past has been indifferent. Despite winning the T20I series in South Africa which was their maiden series win on South African soil they have been outplayed in every department in the Test series and the ODI series so far. After losing the Test series 3-0, they are trailing in the 5 match ODI series 3-0 and unless they make a dramatic comeback we might have a 5-0 battering in our hands.