Sri Lanka’s new cricket team Selectors headed by Upul Tharanga have decided to do away with the unofficial policy of their predecessors who emphasized on the introduction of young blood and instead bring back old hands to prop the team at this year’s T20 World Cup which takes place in the West Indies and the USA.
Tharanga and four others replaced the previous Selection Committee headed by the controversial Pramodya Wickremasinghe in November last year and in their maiden task formed two squads for this month’s home series against Zimbabwe.
As a first step they have taken in the 36-year old veteran Angelo Mathews to be part of the T20 squad having played his last match in March 2021 against the West Indies on a tour of the Caribbean.
Mathews represented Sri Lanka at the crease on 63 occasions and scored 1148 runs with a highest 81.
“We don’t need to have a policy for young players and we don’t want to go all out with young players. We need experienced players and if they are fit and performing well they will be selected.
“The experience of old players is good for the young players to learn something”, said Tharanga at his maiden Press conference.
But he contradicted the stance of the new Selection Committee saying there was no place for the 34-year old Dinesh Chandimal saying the one-time T20 captain stands no chance against players in the mould of Charith Asalanka and Sadeera Samarawickrema who form the middle order batting.
“Chandimal is not in a position to come and challenge players like Charith and Sadeera who bat at Number 4 and 5 the same position that Chandimal bats in.
“We have to give (new) players extended runs in their regular slots and not shuffle them around,” said Tharanga.
The new Selection Committee head said he was not against a laid down policy to pick players which has to be tackled by both Sri Lanka Cricket as the controlling body of the sport and the Sports Ministry which supervises them.
“Of course a Selection policy will be useful and that is something that we cannot implement officially and it has to be done by Sri Lanka Cricket and the Sports Ministry,” said Tharanga who declared that 32-year old batsman Dhananjaya de Silva will replace Dimuth Karunaratne as the new Test cricket captain.
De Silva has appeared at the crease 91 times in the traditional five-day format of the game scoring 3301 runs with a highest individual innings of 173.
