Angelo Mathews frustrated with more players getting injured

Sri Lanka skipper Angelo Mathews’ frustrating level is shooting up with a few more Sri Lankan players getting injured ahead of the Test series against the world no.1 team Australia. Fast bowler Suranga Lakmal and allrounder Dhananjaya de Silva are the two new players, who are added to the list of injured players.

Earlier, fast bowlers Dhammika Prasad, Dushmantha Chameera and leg-spinner Jeffrey Vandersay were injured during Sri Lanka’s recent tour of England and Shaminda Eranga was suspended by the International Cricket Council for illegal bowling action.

“It has been a very frustrating few months. Not only one bowler, we’ve lost so many,” Mathews said on Monday. “Vandersay is one of our key bowlers in the spin department. It’s very frustrating to see them going down. The workload has been very high when they play all three formats. When they play continuously, the body eventually gets tired. It’s very hard to divide those players when it comes to Tests, one-dayers and Twenty20s. We haven’t got a wide range of choices to make and pick from. The bowlers who are fit – they’ve got no choice but to play all three formats.”

The 29-year old also said that the coaches and the support staff work to produce players and also try to get them fit. “The coaches in the back end have to do a lot of work to produce players and also try to get them fit. We need more players coming through the ranks, so the coaches have a bigger job to play for the next one-and-a-half years. If the fast bowlers are injured, we need fast bowlers. At the international level, I can’t go as a captain and say we don’t have bowlers. If we don’t have them, we need to know how to produce them.

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“Actually, as backup staff, we need to try and look for more new players and get them ready and fit. We can’t always keep saying, ‘the bowlers are injured, we haven’t got that many bowlers’. We need to try and find them if we don’t have them,” he added.