Sri Lanka’s physiotherapist Nirmalan Dhanabalasingham has expressed concernsfor his players after several of them vomited and some needed a supply of oxygen during the second day’s play of the Delhi Test match in the Indian capital on Sunday (December 3).
Sri Lanka were left with ten players as quite a few were unwell and the team’s trainer and fielding coach were spotted in whites getting ready to come and do fielding duties before the Indian captain Virat Kohli declared the innings on 536 for 7, earlier than expected.
“There were a few players with respiratory distress in terms of like struggling to take deep breaths and we had a couple of guys who had to come off the field to be nebulised and open their airways up. Some actually vomited because what I think is the toxicity of the pollution they weren’t able to deal with it,” Dhanabalasingham told Cricbuzz.
“The advice given by the doctors here at the ground was there was no long-term effects caused by it. My question was always that’s for someone resting, but not playing in an elite sport and having to perform under pressure with this increased stress on their respiratory system,” he added.
Asked about the after effects, Dhanabalasingham warned, “You can get infections from it because these particles in the air get caught and would not be removed from the systems. You can have a higher incidence of things like upper respiratory tract infection, more running nose and throat symptoms. We just have to be smart and give our guys the best possible advice to minimize the risk because they have already been exposed.”
Both fast bowlers Suranga Lakmal and Lahiru Gamage struggled through their overs before eventually going off to the dressing room.
“It would affect as you increase your physical activity as you are now placing higher stress on the systems where it has a greater requirement of your body to process the air that’s coming in and replenish the body of oxygen. Therefore if it is already difficult and then you have to perform physical exercise at the same time that stresses the body even further,” he explained.
Dhanabalasingham having seen several Indian players were wearing masks inside the dressing room in the morning had gone off the ground to purchase masks for Sri Lankan players and they came out to field after lunch wearing the protective equipment.
“The difficulty with something like this is once the pollution on the body is clear, there will be some residual effects in the body. We will have to manage them quite well over the next couple of days, look after them well and give them all the kind of medical support,” he noted.
Cricket could see minimum health standards being introduced hereafter. “Going forward, there is some way of measuring it (pollution) so that we know in the future whether it is safe or not safe for someone to come off. For this particular Test match, we are almost stuck where our guys have to obviously go off in kinds of conditions if it is similar tomorrow. I don’t know where they draw the line.”
When asked about the chaos in the dressing rooms, Sri Lankan team manager Asanka Gurusinha explained things to Cricbuzz. “We had four oxygen cylinders and the players were masked up inside the changing rooms and we had five doctors in there working on them. The anti-corruption manager gave us the green light and said get everyone in. The Match Referee was in there as well,” Gurusinha elaborated.
“Suranga Lakmal couldn’t walk up the stairs because he was throwing up because of the intensity with which he was bowling. For about one to one and half hours, the readings were very close to 400 and that is extreme danger. It’s started dropping later on but it still says that if you go and check the index it says its hazardous.
“We heard that Ashwin after getting out had oxygen in the changing rooms as well,” Gurusinha went on to say.
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