Sports
DDS becomes Sri Lanka’s 18th Test captain
by Rex Clementine
The wait is over for Dhananjaya de Silva (DDS) as he has been finally given the distinction of captaining the nation’s Test cricket team becoming just the 18th man to do so. The 32-year-old has been captain in waiting and was supposed to take over from Dimuth Karunaratne at the end of the last Test Championship cycle but was sidelined by the national selection panel, yet another strange decision of Pramodya Wickremesinghe’s selection committee.
The appointment of DDS by the new selection panel brings to an end an excellent run by Dimuth Karunaratne, who skippered Sri Lanka in 30 Test matches. He won 12 Tests and lost 12 and the highlight of his captaincy was a stunning series win in South Africa.
Thus, Sri Lanka became the first Asian nation to win a Test series in South Africa in 2019 and India and Pakistan with much better pace attacks and bigger budgets are still struggling to win a series in South Africa.
Dimuth, an honest man had wanted to step down after Sri Lanka’s tour of New Zealand last year providing the new captain ample time to set up his priorities in the new cycle of the World Test Championship. However, he was irrationally persuaded to continue making DDS to wait further for his turn.
Dimuth became the longest serving Sri Lankan captain since Arjuna Ranatunga having done the job for nearly five years. Arjuna was at the helm for ten years, eight of them at a stretch.
Dhananjaya has been the understudy for Dimuth for three years and he is known as a reserved type. His calmness is extended beyond the batting crease to the dressing room as well, but now that he has become the captain, he has got to be firmer. It’s a bad idea to have a laid-back Head Coach, Manager and Captain.
Now that he has been axed from the ODI side, DDS has all the time to concentrate on Test match cricket. Although he will start off his stint with the one-off game against Afghanistan, the bigger challenge will be later this year when he leads the team in England in a three match Test series.
The door has not been completely shut on DDS in one-day cricket as selectors have indicated that he is not their man for the number six slot. He has been asked to bat top of the order in domestic cricket and in the ongoing one-day competition he bats at number three.
DDS also changed clubs during this domestic season. While he represented Tamil Union in the First-Class tournament, he moved over to CCC for the one-day competition, and he’s expected to remain there for a while.
Sri Lanka have ten Tests this year. Apart from the one-off game against Afghanistan and three match series in England, they will host New Zealand for two Tests and travel to Bangladesh and South Africa for two Tests each.
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IPL 2025: Chennai Super Kings suffer fifth loss on the trot as Kolkata Knight Riders register monster win
So that’s what happens when Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) get the kind of pitch their spinners like. Sunil Narine, Varun Chakravarthy and Moeen Ali (12-1-55-6) went into Chepauk and burgled wickets away from the five-time IPL champions until they were a pale, weak shadow of themselves. Chennai Super Kings (CSK) crumbled to 103 for 9, their lowest IPL total at home, suffered a fifth successive defeat, which had never happened before in their entire history, and are marooned in ninth place on the points table. Welcome back to captaincy, MS Dhoni.
The major characteristic of a black-soil pitch is that it is slow and it grips. It felt like home, which is ironic because home hasn’t felt like home for them this season. KKR would prefer to play most of their matches in conditions like this but their efforts to procure them at the Eden Gardens hasn’t gone well. Ajinkya Rahane doesn’t even want to talk about it now. He did, however, spearhead a phenomenal bowling performance. He brought Moeen into the XI and set him loose on CSK’s two left-hand openers. Devon Conway couldn’t overcome the handicap. The KKR offspinner pocketed a wicket maiden. In the next over, Rachin Ravindra was gone. CSK were bleeding by the end of the powerplay, their 31 for 2 only slightly better than the season low of 30 for 3 that they themselves had set, against Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
Exposing this CSK team’s middle order is the only thing their oppositions need to do to win against them. Rahul Tripathi was brought in as Ruturaj Gaikwad’s replacement but he couldn’t figure out whether he wanted to hit out or play through and that indecision was reflected in his final score – 16 off 22. Vijay Shankar could have been dismissed for a duck, or for 20, had KKR held onto their catches. Even with those two lives he couldn’t push on to make a big score. Shivam Dube walked out with CSK at 59 for 3. He had faced only 13 balls and that was still enough time for the score to slip to 75 for 8, at which point his team was in danger of recording their lowest total in IPL history.
For the 16th time in his IPL career, Narine bowled his four overs without conceding a boundary. No one, having got through their full quota, has done it more times. He also knocked off Tripathi, who didn’t know which way the ball would turn, and Ravindra Jadeja and MS Dhoni, who didn’t know which way the ball would spin. There was some doubt over the Dhonii lbw, though. UltraEdge showed what looked like faint murmurs as the ball passed the bat.
CSK were being smothered. They had to wait 63 balls between boundaries – only two teams have ever been that emphatically silenced in this tournament – and hit just three after the eighth over (one of them off a top edge). They had to bring in Deepak Hooda as Impact Player, accepting the risk of going in with a bowler short when they would have to defend this total. But even that gamble backfired. Hooda fell for a duck and one of their key players, Matheesha Pathirana, could not take part in the game.
Defending 103 is a thankless job because bowlers tend to go hard searching for wickets and in that process they leak runs. After under-performing in their batting powerplay, CSK underwhelmed with their bowling powerplay. KKR ransacked 71 runs in the first six overs. This game was no contest.
Brief scores:
Kolkata Knight Riders 107 for 2 in 10.1 overs (Sunil Narine 44, Quinton de Kock 23, Ajinkaya Rahane 20*, Rinku Singh 15*; Anshul Kamboj 1-19, Noor Ahmad 1-08) beat Chennai Super Kings 103 for 9 in 20 overs (Devon Conway 12, Rahul Tripathi 16, Vijay Shankar 29, Shivam Dube 31; Sunil Narine 3-13, Varun Chakravarthy 2-22, Harshit Rana 2-16, Moeen Ali 1-20, Vaibhav Arora 1-31) by eight wickets
[Cricinfo]
Egypt forward Mohamed Salah has signed a new two-year contract with Liverpool.
The 32-year-old’s previous deal was scheduled to run out in the summer and there had been doubts he would stay with the Reds following comments from him during the season and speculation linking him with a move to Saudi Arabia.
However, he is staying and will have the chance to add to his 243 goals and 109 assists for the club in 393 appearances.
“Of course I’m very excited – we have a great team now,” said Salah.
“Before also we had a great team. But I signed because I think we have a chance to win other trophies and enjoy my football.
“I have played eight years here, hopefully it’s going to be 10. I’m enjoying my life here, enjoying my football. I have had the best years of my career here.”
Salah has scored 32 goals in all competitions this season, including 27 in the Premier League as the Reds chase a 20th top-flight title. Liverpool are 11 points clear of second-placed Arsenal with seven games remaining.
Salah, who joined Liverpool from Roma in 2017, has won the Champions League, Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup and Fifa Club World Cup with the Reds.
He was one of three key Liverpool players who will be out of contract this summer, along with right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold and centre-back Virgil van Dijk.
Netherlands defender Van Dijk has said there has been progress on talks over a new deal but Alexander-Arnold has been heavily linked with a move to Real Madrid.
[BBC]
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