Injury woes continue as Binura goes down 

Rex Clementine
in Sydney 

At the rate Sri Lanka’s players are breaking down during the World Cup here in Australia, there is one  thing  that’s  clear. There’s something that’s seriously faulty in our coaching  system. There’s also another point, we don’t appreciate Chaminda Vaas as much as he should be. The left-arm seamer played Test cricket for 16 years and missed just one tour due to injury – England 1998. Apart from the 100 Test matches that he played in, Vaas also played County Cricket for close to a decade repressing four different English counties – Middlesex, Worcestershire, Northampton and Hampshire.

In Perth, playing at the state of the art Optus Stadium, the Sri Lankans had their tails up after setting Australia a target of 158. A score of 158 isn’t that fancy in modern day cricket, but this was Perth, where quicks dominated and the Aussies were under fire having lost their first game to New Zealand by a massive 89 runs.

All the excitement faded away in the first over itself as Binura Fernando limped off the field holding his hamstring. He never returned to the field.  The Sri Lankans flew off to Sydney yesterday and a call will be made on Binura today. The Island learns that we are only waiting for confirmation that he too has been ruled out. That will be Sri Lanka’s sixth injury in this World Cup and you can only pity a team that has lost half its side.

Ironically, Binura wasn’t part of the original squad or one of the traveling reserves and was called up to Australia as replacement for Dilshan Madushanka, who tore his quad muscle and was ruled out of the tournament on the eve of the curtain-raiser in Geelong. Binura had little time to get acclimatized to conditions as Pramod Madushan (hamstring) and Dushmantha Chameera (calf) were also injured and featured during the qualifying round. He hardly looked match fit moving about gingerly and your worst fears came to a reality when he went off in Perth. Asitha Fernando or Matheesha Pathirana will be drafted in for him.  Despite the heavy loss in Perth, Sri Lanka had their moments defending 158 particularly when Lahiru Kumara bowled a hostile spell. Not often does an Asian fast bowler gets the Aussies rattled unless he’s Wasim Akram, but Kumara after troubling Aaron Finch, hit Glenn Maxwell on the cheek and the batsman was in discomfort. That moment you realized how much the team is missing Dushmantha Chameera.

Group ‘A’ is now wide open after England’s shock defeat to Ireland yesterday. Sri Lanka will play New Zealand and England in Sydney and Afghanistan at the Gabba and if they win two of those three games, they should go through.