Sri Lanka bowling coach Rumesh Ratnayake has stated that there is no excuse for how the off-spinner Dilruwan Perera and the left-arm chinaman Lakshan Sandakan bowled in some of the spells against the Indian batsmen on Day 1 of the third Test at Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi.
The duo went for 207 runs in 44 overs as India piled yet another mammoth total (371-4) owing to the 20th and 11th Test tons of Virat Kohli and Murali Vijay respectively.
"Everybody knows that Indian batsmen are at a different level but having said that, it's not an excuse,” Ratnayake was quoted by PTI as saying.
"Although he (Dilruwan Perera) has got 100 wickets, he will be very disappointed with the manner in which he bowled in some of the spells. The bowlers have given India 70 runs too many in my view," he further said.
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Talking about the 26-year-old Sandakan, Ratnayake felt that lack of confidence did not allow him to bowl the 'googly' against the top order Indian batsmen.
"He is comfortable with his normal chinaman deliveries (bringing back into right hander) but the googly is the thing that we see might trouble the batsmen which he hides very well. It is not very easy to read. He should bring it on and mix it.
"Sandakan should have been bringing in the googly much earlier into play and that's one of the things we spoke at tea and which he did only at the end (got Vijay and Rahane). So we were asking why he didn't bring it on more. It might be a confidence issue but we will certainly discuss," the bowling coach explained.
Ratnayake also disclosed why Sri Lanka decided to go with the extra batsman which has put huge pressure on the bowlers.
"It was a decision which we had to take. We had to decide whether to go with an extra bowler or with an extra batsman since we hadn't done well in our batting. We wanted to make a better statement with a better score. If we were going to bat the first day, we wanted those seven batsmen. That was the decision we had to take,” Ratnayake asserted
"It certainly taxes the opening bowlers because they are the ones who bowled the most in the last game also. Even today they were heavily taxed," he concluded.
