Thirimanne in danger of losing his place to Dhananjaya | Daily News
Lakshan Sandakan and Roshane Silva also in the mix:

Thirimanne in danger of losing his place to Dhananjaya

Dhananjaya de Silva
Dhananjaya de Silva

Thursday: Sri Lanka are looking at changes to their batting order as well as taking a decision on who would replace the injured Rangana Herath for the third and final cricket Test against India starting at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium here on Saturday.

Sri Lanka trail 1-0 in the three-match series and need to put up a much better batting performance than they displayed at Nagpur to salvage something out of the series and prevent India from beating them 2-0. The rain-hit first Test was drawn at Kolkata.

One of the batting changes Sri Lanka have in mind is the important number three slot where Lahiru Thirimanne has failed to fulfill the early promise he showed and has struggled so far to produce the runs required of a batsman in that position. Ever since he was brought back to the no. 3 slot in the series against Pakistan in the UAE, Thirimanne has produced just one half century in six innings. A good part of his dismissals have been due to poor shot selection that has led to his downfall.

“It is to me the most important position in the batting order – number three,” said Asanka Gurusinha, who was one of the successful number three batsmen Sri Lanka had when they won the 1996 Cricket World Cup. “Sometimes you walk in the first over or you stay in the dressing room for two three sessions. It’s the mental switch that you have to do between certain scenarios. It is affecting us. It is a lie if I say no. Thiri played some very bad shots in the last game which he shouldn’t have. You said the word temperament and that is lacking.

“Dimuth (Karunaratne) and the other openers the momentum has to be built for the rest of the batsmen. We have stroke makers coming in from Angelo (Mathews). We had Aravinda (de Silva) who was a stroke-maker, if you bring Aravinda in the 30th over you know that he will just keep batting and get big scores. Same like Mahela Jayawardene when he comes in 30th or 35th over and that’s easy for him. We need to look at what we are doing at number three,” said Gurusinha currently playing the role of cricket manager as well as national selector.

One option Sri Lanka has for the number three position is to give it to Dhananjaya de Silva who sometimes opens the batting for his club Ragama CC and fared quite well in the recently concluded Sri Lanka A tour to the West Indies scoring a century and two half-centuries in leading his team to a 2-1 win in the unofficial test series. It was this performance that won him a recall to the national side for the current tour and he finds himself a step away from taking on the all important no. 3 position which has become a nightmare for the team since Kumar Sangakkara retired in August 2015.

The other batting option Sri Lanka are looking at is the number 7 spot which at the moment is occupied by batting all-rounder Dasun Shanaka. With Dhananjaya de Silva will also able to turn his arm over bowling off breaks, uncapped Roshen Silva is being looked as a possibility.

Despite Sri Lanka calling for uncapped leg-spinner Jeffrey Vandersay as replacement for injured Rangana Herath, Lakshan Sandakan who has taken 20 wickets from 7 Tests with his left-arm chinaman deliveries looks the most likely choice to replace the veteran spinner.


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