Colombo
Sacked as skipper, pacer Lasith Malinga was on Thursday named in Sri Lanka\u2019s 15-strong World Cup squad and the country\u2019s embattled cricket board hoped that the veteran will put behind the disappointment to show up for the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 35-year-old Malinga was replaced as captain by \nDimuth Karunaratne, who leads the Test team but hasn\u2019t played an ODI \nsince the 2015 World Cup. The surprising move continued the ongoing \nturmoil in Sri Lankan cricket, which is also being investigated for \nlarge-scale corruption by the ICC. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe hope he would play for \nthe country,\u201d Sri Lanka Cricket chief Shammi Silva said while announcing\n the squad amid speculation that Malinga, who is currently with IPL \nfranchise Mumbai Indians, will quit. \u201cI spoke to him on the telephone \nand explained to him the reasons,\u201d added Asantha de Mel, the chairman of\n selectors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The team was most recently hammered by South Africa \nin an away limited-overs series. Sri Lanka start their World Cup \ncampaign on June 1 at Cardiff against New Zealand. They are due to play \ntwo warm-up games against South Africa and Australia before that. De Mel\n said captaincy was not working out for Malinga and he struggled to make\n the team a cohesive unit.\u201cHe was performing alright, but was not able \nto lead the others,\u201d de Mel explained. Sri Lanka\u2019s World Cup squad \nfeatures quite a few comeback players, led by Karunaratne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeffrey\n Vandersay, the 29-year-old leg-spinner played his last one-dayer in \n2017 alongside the 30-year-old 117-match veteran Lahiru Thirimanne.De \nMel said Sri Lanka\u2019s openers have been dismal in the ODIs resulting in \ntheir poor ratings currently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur opening batsmen have been \nfailing very regularly, this meant we have been losing far too many \nwickets in the first 10 overs,\u201d de Mel said on the inclusion of three \nopeners captain Karunaratne, Thirimanne and Avishka Fernando.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Karunaratne\n said the team needs to bat solidly in the first 10 overs which would \nenable explosive batsmen to chase 300-plus totals, now becoming the norm\n in ODI cricket. Kusal Janith Perera will be the wicket-keeper and he \ncould also be used an opener if required.\u201cWe needed batsmen with bowling\n ability at number 6 and 7 positions,\u201d de Mel said explaining the \ninclusion of Siriwardena.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ColomboSacked as skipper, pacer Lasith Malinga was on Thursday named in Sri Lanka\u2019s 15-strong World Cup squad and the country\u2019s embattled cricket board hoped that the veteran will put behind the disappointment to show up for the team. The 35-year-old Malinga was replaced as captain by Dimuth Karunaratne, who leads the Test team but hasn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59447,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59448,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59446\/revisions\/59448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}