ICC makes a blunder while praising Dimuth Karunaratne on Facebook; he responds

The International Cricket Council (ICC) found itself in an awkward situation after they confused Sri Lankan cricketer Lahiru Thirimanne with his compatriot Dimuth Karunaratne. Much to their embarrassment, they were corrected by Karunaratne himself and no one else.

The Sri Lankan skipper was at his marvelous best against Bangladesh during the Pallekele Test, where he notched up a career-best 244-run marathon knock, which came off 437 balls and featured 26 boundaries. Batting for a whopping 698 minutes, Karunaratne tumbled records aplenty and even joined an elite list of Sri Lankan batsmen who have stood on the crease for an entire day.

His 345-run stand alongside Dhananjaya de Silva, who got 166 from 291 deliveries, is another record for Sri Lanka in Tests against Bangladesh and otherwise. After the first Test ended with a sleepy draw, the ICC shared a picture of Thirimanne playing an eye-catching straight drive but erroneously tagged Karunratne in the post.

ICC deleted the post later

The post captioned “Precision. Elegance. Poise” quickly drew the attention of many of the followers of the page. “Dear ICC, he is Thirimanne, not Karunaratne,” a fan commented. Taking notice, Karunaratne responded to the post and commented: “That’s not me.” Realizing their mistake, ICC deleted the post from all their platforms and reposted it, tagging Lahiru Thirimanne correctly the next time.

Meanwhile, both the Sri Lankan men are in action in the second and last Test against Bangladesh at the same venue. Notably, the dull draw in the previous game – which witnessed 1289 runs scored across 14 sessions in five days before rain played its part to prepone the inevitable result – has brought the Pallekele Stadium under the scanner.

Highlighting the stark difference between the bat and ball, the surface was handed one demerit point by the ICC and was given a below-average rating by the Match Referee Ranjan Madugalle, who is also a part of the ICC Elite Match Referee Panel. Only 17 wickets fell in the entire game that recorded even a wicket-less day, taking the average runs per wicket to a massive 75.82 runs, which Madugalle found “very high”.