JOIN USDinesh Chandimal’s return to action after a bout of pneumonia which forced him to skip the first Test at Galle, proved to be an eminently forgettable experience. He did precious little with the bat, picking up scores of 10 and two and saw his team go down by an innings and 53 runs to lose the second Test and the series to India. The Sri Lankan skipper fronted up the media after the match. Excerpts:
On Lanka’s contrasting batting in two innings: We were completely outplayed. The first innings effort was disappointing and it cost us heavily. They (India) batted well too. Scoring 622 is huge. That put us under lot of pressure. We fought hard in our second innings. It was a fine effort by both Kusal Mendis and Dimuth Karunaratne. After yesterday we had some discussion and in those meetings; we planned about how to go about things today. I still feel that everyone fought very hard but we kept losing wickets. I am really pleased with the way we batted in the second innings. We need to pick up the positives and look forward to the next game.
On batting against Ravindra Jadeja: He is a very special bowler. That is the reason why he is ranked number one. Credit to him for sticking to his plans and he bowled really well.
On employing sweep and reverse sweep so heavily: After the second day’s play, we felt it was tough to bat on it. We tried to play straight but we couldn’t score well. Before the second innings we had a discussion and had a chat about what was the best way to score runs. Everyone agreed that the best way moving forward was by using the sweep and reverse sweep shots heavily. We executed really well in the second innings.
On the surface and relying too much on spin: At the moment we have in our ranks two experienced bowlers, Rangana Herath and Dilruwan Perera. We had a wicket that can turn and we expected them to come into the scene. But we couldn’t execute those plans in this game.