DDS wary of throwing Kamindu to the deep end

Sri Lanka captain Dhananjaya de Silva said that he is not too fond of getting in form batter Kamindu Mendis to move up to number three from his current position of number seven.Kamindu has scored a hundred and a half-century in the two Tests so far against England and in his brief five match career has amassed three hundreds and three half-centuries.

“If he is scoring runs at seven, then let him score runs at seven. We should not upset his momentum. We will see whether we can do changes in the future moving forward. We have to ask him as well and how he feels about the move,” Dhananjaya told journalists.

“That would be a tough call on him to go up to number three” he added.

England’s middle order batsman Joe Root has been a thorn in the Sri Lankan flesh and Dhananjaya said his bowlers need to dismiss him early.

“You can not say that our plans didn’t work out for Joe Root. He adapted quickly to whatever we did. He is quick to gauge what we are doing and adjust. That’s the hallmark of a great player. We are now planning more things.”

Sri Lanka have been poor in their first innings and Dhananjaya felt that a big first innings total is what his side needed badly.

“We need to score big runs and that’s the biggest fault that we had in the first two Tests. Most of our batters who had got starts didn’t convert. Joe Root is a good example. He converted the starts into hundreds. Others batted around him. One of us need to do that and if that happens we need to get to the 320 mark in the first innings and that’s what we have been not able to do.”