Sri Lanka will be relieved that they will be able to balance the side as former captain Angelo Mathews is set to start bowling during the upcoming limited-over series against India. The 30-year-old resumed bowling during the bilateral series at home against India in August, having not bowled for more than a year. However, he missed the tour to UAE after sustaining a hamstring injury during training.
He made a comeback to the side during the ongoing Test series, but only as a specialist batsman.
“If he is chosen into the ODIs, which I am sure he will, he will bowl. He is practising bowling in the nets already,” Rumesh Ratnayake told journalists on Friday. “Angelo has got a very acute injury. It’s not only the thighs now, it’s gone to the calves as well. We are very cautious of what he does and how he does things. He is managed carefully.
“Yesterday, he bowled six overs in the nets and he looked good. Maybe he will bowl seven overs in the nets tomorrow (Sunday). But we will decide on that depending on whether he will have to bat (in the Test match) and stuff.”
Without Mathews’ bowling, Sri Lanka are struggling to balance the side. The tourists in a bid to strengthen the batting, handed Roshen Silva his first Test cap, but going into the game with just four specialist bowlers backfired. In the absence of veteran Rangana Herath, who returned home with a back niggle, Sri Lanka’s bowling was easy picking for the Indians as they posted 371 for 4 on day one with Virat Kohli and Murali Vijay posting big hundreds. Sri Lanka conceded more than four runs an over on day one.
“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 establishing a better score,” Ratnayake explained.
“If we were going to bat the first day, we would have had those seven batsmen. It certainly taxes the opening bowlers because they are the ones who bowled the most in the last game also. Even today they are heavily taxed.”
