As the Sri Lankan camp badly hit by the injuries and forced to take on South Africa with just 6 fit players, the frustrated and annoyed Islanders’ head coach Mickey Arthur has called the International Cricket Council (ICC) to introduce injury substitutions in Test cricket.
The tourists were already playing the hosts South Africa in a Boxing Day Test without Angelo Mathews and Suranga Lakmal – both out with hamstring injuries and on Monday (December 28), things turned horrendously in Centurion as the 5 touring players got injured on Day 3 of the play.
The injury crisis started with Dhananjaya de Silva, who had to go off the field with an injury while batting on 79 and eventually has been ruled out of the two-Test series with a quadricep tear.
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Later, Dhananjaya was followed by Kasun Rajitha, Lahiru Kumara, Wanindu Hasaranga, and Dinesh Chandimal with muscle injuries. However, Hasaranga later returned and claimed a four-wicket haul.
Meanwhile, Arthur has blamed the team’s inadequate preparation due to COVID-19 restrictions for the injury outbreak at the Sri Lankan camp while confirming that he would be bringing up the topic of injury replacements for discussion at the ICC cricket committee, of which he is a member.
Arthur said, “In terms of COVID-19 substitutions, I sit on the ICC cricket committee and I will be having a chat at the end of this Test match. India lost one of their quicks today. I suspect that more teams are going to lose their quicks as it goes on. The rigors of the workload is just going to be too much with coronavirus around.”
The coach further added, “If the world was was normal I don't think we'd be in this situation because I think the conditioning would be perfect and I think the guys would be ready to go. With this being an abnormal world at the moment, I think that will come up for discussion at the ICC level at some point. We're down to seven, and if Chandi's out, we've only got six fit players to finish a Test match, which is not good enough for anybody. It's not good enough for the team, it's not good enough for the TV audience, and it's not good enough for our position either.”
On being asked how bad the injury crisis is, Arthur said: “I don't know what the prognosis is on Dinesh Chandimal. I'm hoping it's cramp, but I get the feeling it's a little bit more than cramp. So that's another one down.
Luckily we brought 21 players, otherwise, it would be batting coach Grant Flower at No. 3 and me at No. 4 in the next Test. It is what it is. We've just got to work through that and hope that we get some players coming back from injury, and some that are not as bad as what we initially thought.”
Noteworthy, the day three's play ended with Sri Lanka 65/2 in their second innings trailing by 160 runs after South Africa finished their first innings with a massive total of 621 runs in Centurion.
(Reuters inputs)
