Sri Lanka moved up to the third spot on the World Test Championship 2023-25 table – behind India and Australia – after their convincing 2-0 series win at home over New Zealand, but Dhananjaya de Silva didn’t comment on the prospects of getting into next year’s final. However, Sri Lanka have four Tests to play in this cycle – two away in South Africa and two at home against Australia as well.
“We’re only looking at it from one match to another. If you look too far ahead you can miss out on what’s immediately important,” Dhanajaya said. “It’s what I always tell the young players as well, if you do what’s required from one match to another, then what needs to happen in the points table will take care of itself.”
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Meanwhile, the Sri Lanka captain was, however, proud to have pushed the team up to 5th in the ICC Test rankings as well. However, Sri Lanka’s big win in the second Test came after beating New Zealand under a pile of runs in the first innings as they posted 602/5 before declaring as well.
“I have been part of the side for six years and we’ve always wanted to come up in rankings but we tried and failed. We just couldn’t get the right team makeup, but we have got it right now. And now we also have combinations that can work on any surface, both at home and overseas,” Dhananjaya de Silva said. “More than Kamindu’s double hundred, I wanted Kusal Mendis to get a hundred because he hadn’t scored one in quite some time. But once we got to that point in the match, I think that was the best decision to take,” Dhananjaya said. To his credit, Kamindu himself agreed with the decision.”
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“We had put a big total on the board, even at lunch I had 136. So the plan even then was to score a little bit more and then put them into bat. I think the decision was taken at the right time because we all know that in Galle batting in the last hour is quite difficult. And I think it’s because of that decision that we were able to bowl them out the following morning,” Dhananjaya de Silva concluded. “Nishan had bowled really well in domestic cricket for quite some time, and what I had stressed on was to bring in a bowler that could keep the economy rate low, especially on a turning track. That’s how you put pressure on the opposition, with Prabath [Jayasuriya] at the other end. And I think he did his job excellently in this game,” Dhananjaya said.
