A few questions had been asked about Dimuth Karunaratne’s batting in the first innings and he has answered his critics so well in the ongoing series with scores of 93 in Abu Dhabi and 196 in Dubai.
ODI snub doesn’t worry me – Dimuth Karunaratne
Opener Dimuth Karunaratne has been in superb form this year, having already notched up over 800 runs..
Pity that he didn’t make both knocks into personal milestones having missed out on a well-deserved hundred in the first Test where he was run out and a maiden double hundred in the second game where tiredness saw him chipping one onto the stumps. But his rise as a consistent opener has eased pressure on rest of the batting and augurs well for the future.
Dimuth has already scored more than 900 runs this year at an average of over 46 and with Sri Lanka due to play three more Tests in 2017, there is a good possibility that he could become the highest run getter in Test cricket this year.
What his excellent form has done is ease the pressure on the middle order as Dinesh Chandimal and Angelo Mathews shouldered the bulk of the burden in the past.
He has been good in the second innings, but his returns in the 1st essay have been mediocre. This was his first Test hundred in the first innings after 21 Tests. Between his hundred against West Indies in Galle in 2015 and the ton in this Test match, he had only managed four half-centuries in between.
Continuous failure in the first innings left Karunaratne bewildered. It was a problem that even the coaches were finding hard to fix. So Dimuth opted to chat to his school coach Harsha de Silva. The former coach of St. Joseph’s College, who has unearthed several raw talents lives in Australia and had come to Colombo on a short visit.
Dimuth had a net session with Harsha and at the end of it he was told that there were no technical things that he had to work on. Everything was in order. However, the coach told him to think about his mindset when batting. Try to be positive and go for his shots rather than getting bogged down when the loose ball was on offer.
Read Also – Karunaratne ton puts Sri Lanka on top
The meeting happened after the Indian series and since then in the ongoing series Dimuth has been prolific. He attacked leg-spinner Yasir Shah without allowing him to settle down. That was a key in Sri Lanka taking a firm grip on the game.
In the final session on day one, with Yasir Shah getting some help, players were crowding in around the bat. Dimuth broke the shackles by coming down the wicket to the leg-spinner and depositing him for six.
He picked up 19 fours in all, apart from the six and there were some elegant drives, particularly against the faster bowlers. There has been little luck for him this series despite some good knocks. In Abu Dhabi he was denied a Test hundred while in the second innings he was given out caught at short leg off the bowling of Yasir. But he had not got bat to ball. Had he reviewed, he would have survived, but Dimuth had been deceived by two noises that prompted him not to review. Here in Dubai he was bowled off an inside edge after the ball deflected off his body.
It was a spectacular knock nevertheless. Had Dimuth batted for 32 more minutes, he would have occupied the crease for ten hours in the Test match. He posted his career best score going past the 186 he made against West Indies in Galle in 2015. What his knock did was Sri Lanka to get closer to the 500 run mark and put pressure on Pakistan.
Such solid batting had not been witnessed in recent times from the Sri Lankans and it came at a moment when it was most needed with Sri Lanka trying to seal a series win against a team ranked above them overseas for the 1sttime in three years.
It would have been the first double hundred by a Sri Lankan opener since Sanath Jayasuriya hammered 253 against Pakistan in Faisalabad in 2004. The last Sri Lankan batsman to score a double hundred was Kumar Sangakkara, who accomplished the milestone in Wellington in January 2015.
Given his stunning form in Test cricket, Dimuth should have got a look into the ODI squad. He was in fact part of Sri Lanka’s 2015 World Cup outfit before injury ruled him out of the competition. One of the problems the ODI team has faced at present is inability to bat through the 50 overs and Dimuth would have been the ideal person to do the job.
