But now there is need for him to be a different sort of player entirely. The rocket-fuelled arrival of Kamindu Mendis means someone had to move up the order to No. 3. Chandimal was thriving at No. 5, a position in which he averages 50.29n and from where he had scored seven of his 15 centuries, and a double-century.

But Sri Lanka needed Kamindu to move up, and Chandimal made way.

“When the selectors and coach asked me to move up to No. 3, it was a new thing for me as well, because I’d only ever batted one innings at No. 3,” Chandimal told ESPNcricinfo. “I told them to give me a day to think about it. So I thought, well, I’m nearing the end of my career, and we need to groom youngsters. No. 3 is a big challenge, and that you face the new ball and fresh bowlers.”

Batting No. 3 is notoriously difficult in a place such as South Africa. The first Test  of this series was a case in point: Sri Lanka were guilty of playing too many aggressive strokes in their nosedive to 42 all out. “Batting at No. 3, you have to leave a lot of balls, and your forward defence has to be solid. Those are the things to tighten, and those are the biggest challenges for me.”

Beyond this, on this particular tour, Sri Lanka are facing an exceptionally tall seam attack. Marco Jansen is a little taller than two metres. Kagiso Rabada stands a shade higher than 1.9 metres. Sri Lanka were perhaps guilty of not leaving as many balls on length as they could have, but they are also dealing with unusual trajectories.

“In Sri Lanka, we don’t have fast bowlers like that – with this kind of height,” Chandimal said. “So there’s no way to train against those kinds of release points. They get a foot or a foot-and-a-half of extra bounce. That is why it’s tough for us to judge.

“It’s on length that you have to leave the ball, often. With a normal bowler, the ball has to pitch a little shorter for us to be able to leave on length. But with these bowlers, even if they pitch a couple of feet fuller than that, you can probably leave it based on length. If we get better at judging that length, we will be able to handle these bowlers much better.”

Of Sri Lanka’s batters in Durban, Chandimal was the best at negotiating that bounce. Though he was out for a duck to a spectacular inseaming delivery from Jansen in the first innings, Chandimal was Sri Lanka’s best batter in the second dig. Arriving at the crease in the fifth over, he struck 83 off 174 deliveries.

“When you play here, it’s not good to be tentative,” Chandimal said. “If you play a forward defence, you have to commit to it. If you play a shot you have to commit. And if you leave it, it’s the same. It’s that tentativeness that can get you.

Part of that commitment will have flowed down from the management. When they asked him to bat No. 3, Sri Lanka coach Sanath Jayasuriya  the selectors, and captain Dhananjaya de Silva  had assured him they would not abandon him if the experiment went badly.

“They gave me a lot of confidence that as long as they’re around, they

will back me, whether or not the runs were coming at No. 3,” Chandimal said. “It’s when there’s trust inside the team like that, that we are able to take decisions without being afraid.”

In any case, If there is some spice in the Gqeberha pitch, as there is likely to be, Sri Lanka will be desperate for more such innings from their new No. 3. “There are some things you have to do for the team and for the future of Sri Lankan cricket, rather than thinking of yourself. I think I’ve always thought about Sri Lankan cricket first. I won’t complain about batting at No. 3. I’ll just take it as a challenge.”

(Cricinfo)