Depleted Sri Lanka face tough task in Second Test

Sri Lanka and India will lock horns in the second game of the two-match Test series today at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore and Skipper Dimuth Karunaratne said they expected to give a fitting farewell for Suranga Lakmal in this day-night game which will commence at

2.30 pm with a pink ball. Karunaratne said always we are coming to play the game with a winning idea and have many plans and the most important is to execute our plan at the match. This match is a day-night affair and we are determined to correct our mistakes.

Suranga Lakmal who has played 69 tests during his 11-year career is going to retire after this test and his valuable service we can never forget said Karunaratne. During my test captaincy, Lakmal gave his best effort to the side and he never went back to the pavilion due to injuries during a match and put in his maximum effort. Lakmal’s retirement is a big loss for our Test team and wishes him the best of luck as he deserves to play county cricket said Skipper Karunaratne. It is very difficult to find a replacement for Lakmal and we hope SLC is more concerned about red ball games such as three-day and, four-day matches to find good pacemen for the Test team in the future.

Karunaratne said Lahiru Kumara and Pathum Nissanka are ruled out for this game due to injuries but so far we never finalized replacements for the side and it will make after the final training session (yesterday night) and also wanted to consider the night dew factor and observe the wicket very well to finalize the team. This is a day-night test and one session has to be played at night time and we have to look at everything but I am sure we are going with two spinners and Praveen Jayawickrama also has a good chance to enter the team with Embuldeniya and

part-time off-spinners have to give their best said Karunaratne. He also said due to medical advise Dusmantha Chameera is kept for white-ball games to focus on the T-20 World Cup and we couldn’t get his service for this Test match and we have to use limited resources to pick the best team against India.

Meanwhile, Suranga Lakmal who celebrated his 35th birthday on March 10 said this is the right time to retire from test cricket and it will help to give another youngster a chance to get experience. Lakmal who took 170 wickets in 69 test matches said I never thought about my personal records and always played for the team.

I always maintained my fitness to do my best for the team. As a bowler, we have to keep our fitness and manage to keep our workload during the training and use correctly at the game and this is a good lesson to all youngsters added Lakmal.