With the unfortunate withdrawal of Dhananjaya de Silva due to the sudden demise of his father, Ranjan De Silva, the plans made by the Lankan think-tank for their batting lineup for the three-match Test series in West Indies, went topsy-turvy.
Sri Lanka in the recent past has had endless adjustments to their team selections and in particular the batting order. The opening combinations have been on a forever trial mode with a long drawn out transit stage giving way to a spate of changes.
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Just before the pull-out of de Silva, Sri Lanka’s best Test opener of late, Dimuth Karunarathne was ruled out of the Windies tour due to a finger injury. Karunarathne has been relegated to leading the Sri Lanka ‘A’ against Bangladesh ‘A’ later this month leaving space for him to regain much-needed match fitness.
Despite having more of a settled team in the recent past, especially in the longest form of the game, Sri Lanka will have to ‘shuffle’ again to suit the conditions and balance out the team.
Who will make up the ‘Top 3’ in the first Test on 6th June in Trinidad?
The Openers
In the last three years, Sri Lanka has used eight opening pairs with injured Dimuth Karunarathne and axed Kaushal Silva pairing up in 36 innings, by far the longest combination.
- June 1st 2015 – June 1st 2018 – Sri Lankan Opening Pairs
| Partners | Innings | Runs | Highest Stand | Average | Overs |
| Dimuth and Kaushal | 36 | 914 | 123 | 25.38 | 348.1 |
| Dimuth and Tharanga | 12 | 361 | 84 | 30.08 | 117.2 |
| Dimuth and Kusal Mendis | 7 | 216 | 71 | 30.85 | 86.1 |
| Dimuth and Sadeera | 5 | 63 | 29 | 12.60 | 16.5 |
| Dimuth and Kithruwan | 1 | 49 | 49 | 49.00 | 7.0 |
| Kaushal and Tharanga | 2 | 12 | 11 | 6.00 | 2.5 |
| Dimuth and Dilruwan | 2 | 8 | 8 | 4.00 | 9.6 |
| Kusal Janith and Kaushal | 1 | 6 | 6 | 6.00 | 2.2 |
With both Karunarathne and Silva not being a part of the squad, Sri Lanka will form another new opening combination in the form of Kusal’s squared; Mendis and Perera.
Mendis has opened only in 7 innings, amassing 402 runs at an impressive average of 57.42. In the recent Bangladesh Test series, the 23-year old slammed a stunning 196, 68 and 7 while Perera who has been in and out of the Test team due to injuries, has only opened once against Australia in the second innings of the first Test in Pallekelle in 2016.
The Perera-Mendis combination looks deadly but will surely lack a bit of composure that is a pre-requisite of Test cricket. Both are natural stroke-makers, aggressive and free-flowing. On their day, they can unleash wrath on the Windies bowlers but on an off-day, both can be inside the pavilion without doing their job of seeing of the new ball.
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There is a valid school of thought that Mendis is best suited at number three and Perera at number seven, to keep wickets and give the much-needed impetus to the middle order. It will be interesting to see how this combination works out for Sri Lanka.
The Number 3
Since the great Kumar Sangakkara’s retirement in August 2015, Sri Lanka has played 29 Tests, won 12 and lost 13. Sangakkara amassed 12400 runs in 233 innings and out of that, 11679 runs in 207 innings came while batting at number three.
Sri Lanka has used 10 batsmen (including a night watchman) at number three since the veteran’s retirement which raises countless questions for the selectors. Mendis has batted at number 3 in 23 innings, averaging just above 35, while pleasing-to-the-eye Dhananjaya de Silva who will surely be missed, as he has notched up 340 runs including two brilliant centuries against India and Bangladesh in the last two series’.
- Sri Lanka’s number three batsmen – Post Sangakkara retirement
| Player | Matches | Innings | Runs | Highest | Average | Strike Rate |
| Kusal Mendis | 13 | 23 | 779 | 194 | 35.40 | 61.60 |
| Dhananjaya de Silva | 3 | 5 | 340 | 173 | 85.00 | 65.89 |
| Kusal Perera | 5 | 8 | 244 | 110 | 30.50 | 71.97 |
| Kaushal Silva | 1 | 1 | 115 | 115 | 115.00 | 42.75 |
| Lahiru Thirimanne | 4 | 7 | 113 | 51 | 16.14 | 33.63 |
| Sadeera Samarawickrama | 1 | 2 | 51 | 38 | 25.50 | 91.07 |
| Udara Jayasundera | 2 | 4 | 30 | 26 | 7.50 | 38.96 |
| Danushka Gunathilaka | 1 | 2 | 18 | 16 | 900 | 40.00 |
| Dimuth Karunarathne | 2 | 3 | 11 | 11 | 3.66 | 23.40 |
| Malinda Pushpakumara | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1.00 | 3.12 |
After the century in the first innings during the practice game against West Indies President’s XI, the current Test skipper Dinesh Chandimal is set to join the elusive number three club.
He has opened and batted up to number seven in his career so far, but has never come out to bat at the number three position in Tests. How will he cope up with this new responsibility?
Chandimal could be a solid number three batsman as he has the rare ability to wear the bowler’s off and play the long innings. The most significant feature of Chandimal’s batting is his temperament to anchor the batting unit.
He has clearly had tremendous success at number five last year against Pakistan and India, scoring 155* and 164 respectively in two important away tours.
It will be interesting to see if these three players will be persisted with throughout the three matches or if the in-form Mahela Udawatte who has scored truckloads of runs in domestic cricket would be handed a debut.
It is certainly time for the selectors and the team management to pick their lot and stick to a solid, top order through a period of time taking into account the conditions around the world and the batsmen’s temperament in order to bring success to Sri Lanka. This is paramount with the new ICC Test Championship looming from 2019.
