Sri Lanka Skipper Kumar Sangakkara says:
Hardest decision was to exclude Randiv
Dilanka Mannakkara
The much awaited Sri Lankan World Cup squad was chosen way before the
deadline of January15 before none of the teams had finalized their 15.
Sri Lanka Skipper Kumar Sangakkara expressed his views on the omission
of prolific off spinner Suraj Randiv,the axing of old war horses Sanath
Jayasuriya and Chaminda Vaas and also the retention of the relatively
inconsistent Chamara Kapugedara.
To have variety
“The hardest decision was to leave out Randiv from the squad who had
performed pretty well in the past 12 months,” said Skipper Kumar
Sangakkara talking exclusively to Daily News regarding the selection of
the World Cup squad.
He said that Suraj Randiv was left out mainly because Muralitharan
will play almost all matches and that a second off spinner would be hard
to fit in the 11 and that Ajantha Mendis is still only mastered by a few
batsmen.
Difficult to leave out
“Rangana was added for the variety and we would use him a lot against
right handers and some times we might only play a sole spinner in
Murali,” said a confident Sangakkara.
“It was difficult to leave out stalwarts Sanath Jayasuriya and
Chaminda Vaas from the squad but only the 15 best would get selected at
the end of the day and these decisions should be made even with a lot of
emotion attached to it,” said Sanagakkara reasoning out the axing of the
two veterans.
superb with the new ball
“Vaasy has been superb with the new ball even in the English county
season and the Premier league but his direct competition came from
Kulasekara who has been our star ODI bowler for the past 18 months and
Vaasy isn’t that effective with the older ball and in the death overs,”
mentioned Sangakkara as to why an in form Vaas didn’t find his way in to
the team. “Vaasy had a very realistic chance of making the 11 but our
pace bowlers have bowled so well in the recent past so it became
difficult to leave some of these guys to have Vaasy in.”
This author raised the question as to how Chamara Kapugedara who
hasn’t been consistent at all and has a poor average of 22.95 in 86 ODIs
and a below par strike rate of 72 which is way below international
standard for a No 7 batsmen has been retained and Sangakkara stated that
“Kapugedera is a brilliant fielder and he brings a lot to the team in
terms of uplifting team spirit, boosting morale and can also make
important runs.”
He also said that although Kapugedara hasn’t made a lot of runs in
the past one year, he can chip in with some useful knocks lower down the
order.
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