Chandimal’s innings turned the match in Lanka’s favour, says Dimuth

Sri Lanka bounced back from the first Test defeat inside three days to thrash Australia in the second Test by an innings and 39 runs and level the series 1-1 on last Monday with day to spare and this victory was remarkable.

The jubilant Sri Lankan skipper Dimuth Karunaratne said that Dinesh Chandimal’s double century was the innings that turned the match in Sri Lanka’s favour. His maiden double century is the highest individual score by a Sri Lankan against Australia.

Chandi (Dinesh Chandimal) has been in good form. Galle is a place where he has done well. I remember a game against India where he helped us to win from nowhere. I told Chandi to come up with a big knock. The last few years he was not very successful. He’s someone with lot of experience. He has got lot of runs this year. Chandi is someone if he gets a start, will go onto get a big one. I know as we have played a long time with him. It was one of his best knocks, one was against India, then this one. He showed his experience. When your senior player plays a knock like that as captain it makes things easy for me. Angelo can fail, I can fail, but I know that someone will fire for us. That’s a good sign for the series that is ahead.”

Actually an innings like Chandi’ s knock always big boost to me as a captain.That type of knocks always paved the way for our success. Before this series I mentioned about the importance about senior players like Chandimal , Matthews and myself and always one has to play a major part to build up the innings .I also did this role in many matches and this time Chandi did it in great style said skipper Dimuth Karunaratne.

The second player is Prabath Jayasuriya the debutant leggie with many domestic experience .He is playing for my club SSC while he was the member of my Colombo team at the National Super League cricket tournament and I had full confidence about him as a leg spinner .He bowled really well.He had a simple plan and always bowls the same line to make good pressure for the opponent batter. Prabath did a decent job to take match bag of 12 wickets and bagged the man of the match award.

Actually we realized where we went wrong during the first test. We wanted to make big score in the first innings and this time it really worked out making 550 runs and credit should go to Chandimal while my self, Kusal Mendis, Angelo Matthews ,debutant Kamindu Mendis and Ramesh Mendis did their part very well as batsmen.

Kamindu Mendis the 23 year old debutant was in good form and scored heavily at the last National Super League tournament and he continued his form to play a good innings while his approach was very good to build up the innings against top level Australian bowlers like Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon and Pat Cummins. Actually Kamindu replaced Dhananjaya de Silva who was tested positive for Covid 19. Now Kamindu is in good form while Dhananjaya will come back and a newcomer has go to out from the team .But now both Kamindu and Dhanajaya are among the runs and this type of competition for the place is very good to make the best team said Dimuth Karunaratne further said “It was very tough, the defeat in the first test. When that happens in that fashion mentally it becomes very challenging. As a group we overcame that well. The coach Chris Silverwood was of immense support,” said Karunaratne after his side had beaten Australia by an innings to win the second Test and share the series one-all.

We knew why it (the first Test) backfired. It was because of the wicket. Our batting is the strongest and since our bowling is very inexperienced. We knew if we put in a decent total, the bowlers would do well. All the batsmen played well.

Meanwhile Karunaratne also pointed out about the Galle wicket. We couldn’t get a good wicket in the first test but it was completely changed and we got successful results in the second game. Now we have to play our third consecutive test at the Galle grounds against Pakistan which will commence from July 16.I think playing at same venue three times is a big advantage for us and Pakistan haven’t that chance. However we can’t underestimate Pakistan team. They are very talented and we are in the Asian region and they have good teams in all formats. However we are in good position and hope to give a good challenge to Pakistan said Karunaratne.

Meanwhile Australian skipper Pat Cummins said that once Sri Lanka got a good first innings lead it was always going to be tough for them.

“We did really well to hang in there for 170 of the 180 overs, Dinesh batted really well and once they got a decent lead it was always going to be tough for us. Unfortunately, it started spinning, they bowled well today, and you can have those sessions where things move pretty quickly in the sub continent and unfortunately, we were on the wrong end of it,” said Cummins.