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Daren Ganga, the Trinidad & Tobago captain, was banking on Ravi Rampaul’s experience to restrict New South Wales in the Super Over in Chennai

ESPNcricinfo staff29-Sep-2011Daren Ganga, the Trinidad & Tobago captain, has said that Ravi Rampaul would have bowled a tight final over and a Super Over “on most days”. Rampaul conceded 16 in the final over to allow New South Wales to force a tie, after which he went for 18 in the Super Over, a target T&T could not chase in Chennai.”Rampaul is our most experienced bowler,” Ganga said. “He has done the job for us in the past, and with more than 15 runs to defend in one over, he is going to pull it off on most days. Maybe he was tired [for the Super Over], having to bowl back-to-back overs after having bowled at the death.”You have to give credit to [Moises] Henriques, though, for the way he batted. We have tried it [bowling around the wicket] time and again during practice, angling it across, and more often than not it worked.”Chasing 140, New South Wales were 123 for 8 at the end of the 19th over. Rampaul was hit for three fours in the 20th over – Henriques hit two, while Patrick Cummins hit one – as New South Wales tied the game. Rampaul then came back on to bowl the Super Over, and Henriques hit him for four fours.There was confusion over Trinidad’s batting line-up in the Super Over. Darren Bravo, a left-hand batsman, initially came out to open, but had to return to the dug out as Lendl Simmons and Adrian Barath took strike against left-arm spinner Steve O’Keefe. Trinidad wanted a left-right pair, but were unaware they had to follow the order mentioned in the list the captains submit before the Super Over.”We were under the impression that you could ask any two of the three to open,” Ganga said. “The rules aren’t explicit and it’s a learning [experience] for us.”New South Wales’ captain Simon Katich said he had chosen O’Keefe to bowl the Super Over because of the sluggish pitch. “We felt pace off the ball was the best option, it showed at the back of our innings as well. Also, O’Keefe had a good outing with the ball [1 for 14 in four overs].”Henriques, who was Man of the Match for his two wickets, 18 not out off nine balls, and his Super-Over blitz, said he was clear about how to go about the chase.”He [Cummins] was fresh to the crease, and at that stage [in the last over] we needed eight of three. I thought about it before the ball was bowled and realised if we took the two [off the fourth ball] I could still be on strike for the last ball if a four or a six was required. As it turned out, I was not needed at all.”

Chennai have relied heavily on spinners thus far but the performance of their seamers, and how their batsmen face up to Dale Steyn, could decide the game

Sriram Veera in Durban23-Sep-2010You get a sense of what to expect on Friday. Royal Challengers Bangalore will most likely hit Chennai Super Kings with bouncers. Even the Central Districts bowlers did it to Chennai on the same Durban pitch a few days back. And it had nearly worked. Even without any fiercely fast bowlers. Bangalore have Dale Steyn and it will be interesting to see how the Indian batsmen in the Chennai line-up handle him.S Badrinath has the upper-cut over the slips as his main option against bouncers, Suresh Raina is yet to develop a proper defensive or attacking option against the same delivery and S Anirudha is an unknown quantity. M Vijay has shown a tendency to land in trouble, trying to pull deliveries from well outside off when it’s banged in short. It’s still not clear whether it’s due to an eagerness to show he can pull, or a sign of nerves that clouds his decision-making ability. You sense that the middle order can quickly disintegrate under pressure. And so, Steyn’s little spell in the middle overs will be crucial. If he can get his radar right, it can get really interesting. He has, at times, got it wrong as well. In this short format, the plans can boomerang and go awry awfully quickly.Anil Kumble knows it. When asked whether he would be deploying the bouncer-strategy, he preferred to play his cards close to his chest. “We have our plans. You will see tomorrow. But it all depends how we execute the plans. We have been successful in the past at times and we have not been successful also on a couple of occasions. It will depend on the pitch and conditions. Your plans have to be very fluid in this format.” Bangalore will miss Jacques Kallis the bowler. In this year’s IPL, Steyn and Kallis had waylaid visiting batsmen with bouncers on their home track in Bangalore.Bangalore lost both the games they played in Durban in this tournament but Kumble chose to remember the contest from last year when they beat Chennai at the same venue in the IPL semi-final. “We need to take confidence that we really did well against Mumbai and it was a narrow loss. Last time we played Chennai here in Durban we won; that’s what we would take rather than think we haven’t won a game here this time.”Chennai didn’t practice on Friday. They just came in from Port Elizabeth. At the end of last league game against the Warriors, Dhoni was asked about the clash with Bangalore and he shared his concerns about his fast bowlers. “I think our fast bowlers will have to pull up their socks. They will have to do definitely well in the coming game. There have been weak links where we need to improve. The spinners have done the job for us so far. Hopefully, on the Durban pitch, the fast bowlers will do well for the team.”Dhoni also said he might use Justin Kemp slightly higher up the order on the Durban pitch. “In the last couple of games, the tracks have been quite slow and low which means [they act] more like a sub-continental pitch. So, players like Anirudha could really contribute.”Dhoni added he wasn’t too concerned about the fact that Bangalore have played couple of games in Durban. “I believe that a Twenty20 game is about that particular day. What the situation is like and what the condition is like. I think they have played a couple of games. And including the warm-up games we too have played the same amount of games in Durban. I don’t think that it will make much of a difference.”

England spinner starred at Lord’s last week, but reveals she ‘wasn’t sure’ she’d return from mental-health break

Valkerie Baynes22-Jul-2025Sophie Ecclestone has revealed she considered quitting cricket in the aftermath of the off-field drama surrounding England Women’s T20 World Cup and Ashes failures.Ecclestone missed the start of the international summer when England hosted West Indies, instead playing for Lancashire during the T20I series while she managed her comeback from a knee injury. She was then ruled out of the ODI series, citing the need to prioritise her wellbeing.Having returned for both white-ball series against India, Ecclestone spoke about the reasons surrounding her absence in a pre-match interview ahead of the third and final ODI at Chester-le-Street.She had come under fire during the Ashes in Australia, where England lost the points series 16-0, after Alex Hartley, the former England spinner turned broadcaster, said Ecclestone had refused to be interviewed by her on TV. Hartley also said she had been “given the cold shoulder” by England players since criticising their fitness following their group-stage exit from the T20 World Cup last October.”It was a tough time for me personally,” Ecclestone told Sky Sports in a pitch-side interview before play on Tuesday. “I tore my meniscus and I had a very sore knee, but I feel like personally I was so tired and so drained from the last few months.Related

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“As a cricketer, we don’t stop, we don’t get much time off and we go from franchise tournaments to England tournaments and it takes it out of you. I feel like during the West Indies series I wasn’t actually sure if I was going to come back and play cricket.”I was away from cricket and I cried to a few people, I cried to my dad, I get emotional now, but it was it was a tough time. But I feel like I’ve come out the other side now and I’m back playing cricket.”Ecclestone credited team-mates Lauren Bell and Alice Capsey, along with her family and friends for helping her return to the cricket field with “a smile on my face again”. That culminated in a Player-of-the-Match award for her 3 for 37 at Lord’s on Saturday, which helped England to an ODI series-levelling victory.Ecclestone disputed the use of the word “refusal” when it came to the infamous interview with Hartley, and appeared to take issue with the timing of the request to talk, suggesting that she wanted to concentrate on her warm-up.”It was a weird time,” Ecclestone said. “I feel like obviously that went down the wrong way, and a few things were said, and I was just concentrating on cricket at that moment.”A lot of things were being said which wasn’t ideal for me and it affected me quite a lot to be honest. It took a lot out of me. There were a lot of words being thrown around about me that I thought were untrue and it wasn’t very nice to hear.”I kind of had to put that to one side, and I did go off social media for a couple of weeks actually during the Ashes, just because it was affecting me quite a lot, what was being said. It wasn’t very nice but we’ve all learnt from that now and there’s a lot of feelings involved but we’re all over that now, and ready to move on.”Ecclestone went on to say that she believed misconceptions had emerged about her in the fallout from the incident.”I feel like a lot of words were being thrown around about me that weren’t true,” she said. “Just that I was really arrogant maybe, and that’s just not me as a person.”The word refusal was getting thrown around and that just wasn’t really true and some of the things people were saying about the team I didn’t really agree with, so it was hard to take for me and hard to take for the team.”Immediately after the Ashes, Clare Connor, managing director of England women’s cricket, described the interview situation as “an unfortunate incident that won’t happen again”.”Our players in general… embrace their media obligations,” Connor said. “It matters to them to be good role models for women’s cricket and the England women’s cricket team. As professional women’s cricket has developed at the rate that it has over recent years, that scrutiny is something that we will all have to embrace and accept.”Ecclestone acknowledged that women’s cricket being in the spotlight more than when she made her debut as a 17-year-old in 2016 was a positive thing and said she had learned from the experience, including the public’s reaction.”I was so surprised,” she said. “I feel like it got slightly blown out of proportion but it was no-one’s fault. It was hard at the time because I feel like I came out to my phone and had about 25,000 messages about something that had happened in the media and I was like, ‘well what’s happened?’ Then I came out and I saw it all, and I was just like, ‘wow like that’s mega.'”

The ACB has given him a 12-month contract extension after a successful 2024 that featured the team’s maiden appearance in a World Cup semi-final

ESPNcricinfo staff09-Dec-2024Jonathan Trott will continue as Afghanistan men’s head coach till the end of 2025. His next assignment will be the ODI leg of Afghanistan’s multi-format tour of Zimbabwe, but he will not take charge in the other formats for personal reasons. In his absence, Hamid Hassan will deputise as head coach and Nawroz Mangal as assistant coach.The Afghanistan Cricket Board has extended Trott’s contract by 12 months following a highly successful 2024 for the team. The year featured Afghanistan’s first ever World Cup semi-final appearance following victories over New Zealand and Australia in the Group- and Super-Eights stages of the T20 event in the West Indies and the USA. They have since beaten both South Africa and Bangladesh in ODI series in Sharjah.Related

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Afghanistan’s next major global tournament is a maiden appearance in the Champions Trophy next year. They qualified for the event after finishing among the top eight teams on the 2023 ODI World Cup points table, after a campaign that featured wins over England, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.Trott’s tenure began in July 2022 with an 18-month stint that was renewed by a year in January 2024. Afghanistan have won 14 of the 34 ODIs and 20 of the 44 T20Is they have played since his appointment.The ongoing stint with Afghanistan is Trott’s first as head coach. He was a consultant with Scotland during the 2021 T20 World Cup. As a player, he made 3835 runs in 52 Tests at an average of 44.08, and was a key figure in England’s away Ashes victory in 2010-11. In ODI cricket, he made 2819 runs at an average of 51.25 with four hundreds and 22 fifties.

ESPNcricinfo experts Sanjay Manjrekar and Piyush Chawla suggest “reviewable” lbw calls against CSK an example of below-par umpiring in the IPL

Karthik Krishnaswamy12-May-20222:49

Piyush Chawla on Conway lbw: ‘Sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t’

Match 59 of IPL 2022 got off to an unusual start, with a power outage at the Wankhede Stadium leading to the unavailability of the Decision Review System for the first two overs. And it took only two balls for the lack of DRS to make an impact on the game, with Chennai Super Kings opener Devon Conway unable to call for a review after being given out lbw off Mumbai Indians left-arm seamer Daniel Sams.Replays suggested that the ball, angling into the left-hander and nipping in further, would have missed leg stump, but there was no way to re-assess umpire C Ravikanthreddy’s decision.Related

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The next over, from Jasprit Bumrah, brought Mumbai another lbw decision in their favour, with Robin Uthappa playing around a good-length ball that straightened on him. Replays suggested this decision, from Chris Gaffaney, may have been a 50-50 call, with the ball straightening to strike Uthappa’s back pad, which was on the move, roughly in line with off stump. There was no way for Uthappa to call on DRS to examine whether the ball struck him in line with the stumps or not, and whether ball-tracking’s projection would have shown the ball to be hitting off stump or not.At the end of the match, which his team lost by five wickets after being bowled out for 97, Super Kings coach Stephen Fleming was philosophical about being on the wrong end of the no-DRS situation.”It was a little bit unlucky that it happened at that time,” Fleming said. “We were a little disappointed, but that’s still part of the game, isn’t it? It sort of set off a chain of events that were not in our favour, but we should be better that than [being bowled out for 97]. It certainly wasn’t a great start.”ESPNcricinfo experts Piyush Chawla and Sanjay Manjrekar, however, suggested that the decision against Conway was just the latest instance of below-par umpiring in the IPL.”It didn’t look out at first go, because the way the ball moved, at the point of impact, it looked like the ball was still doing a bit, so definitely looked like it was going to miss the leg stump, but DRS was not available,” Chawla said on the analysis show . “We have seen some very ordinary umpiring this season, so that was one of the decisions [of that kind] as well.”Manjrekar felt both decisions had been “reviewable”, and that Super Kings’ inability to use DRS during that two-over window had tilted the game in the favour of Mumbai’s fast bowlers, in conditions where they were already thriving.”We talk about the white ball just moving for 2-3 overs and then suddenly stops moving. That is the talk at the international level. They keep wondering why that happens,” he said. “Today, I saw in the seventh and eighth over, Riley Meredith bowling proper outswingers. It was great to see Bumrah come and bowl two early overs with the new ball, and we saw swing from Bumrah, the outswing to Uthappa, and that was too high-quality for Uthappa to handle.”So ball swinging, good bowling at the top, helped by some glitch in technology because there were two decisions there, Uthappa’s and Conway’s, that I would call reviewable.”The quality of umpiring from the local officials this season, Manjrekar felt, had been particularly concerning.”Because there is now a problem getting all the quality foreign umpires from all over the world here, with the Covid situation and everything, you have to make do with a lot of local umpires,” he said. “The DRS was down for 10 minutes, and disaster happened.”It pains me when those kind of decisions happen. I saw one earlier as well, when a ball that pitched outside leg stump, about four or six inches, and those are given out, so that is [disappointing].”He did add, however, that the same situation could have benefited the team on another day. “It could have been the other way round as well. Some obvious decision would have been given not out, and then Mumbai Indians would not have had the chance to review that.”

All the analysis, stats, news and reaction from the third round of the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy

Sruthi Ravindranath28-Sep-2019

The ground will host the first Test between Bangladesh and Zimbabwe later this year, from November 3 to 7

Mohammad Isam28-Jul-2018Sylhet is set to become Bangladesh’s eighth Test venue. The BCB has announced that the north-eastern city will host the first Test of the Bangladesh-Zimbabwe series later this year, from November 3 to 7. It will also host its first ODI, between Bangladesh and West Indies, on December 14.The venue so far has staged seven T20I games, six of them during the 2014 World T20, and one in February this year between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.Zimbabwe, whose tour had to be rescheduled due to the BCB’s plan to shift the Bangladesh Premier League from October to January, will play the second Test at the Shere Bangla National Stadium in Dhaka.Zimbabwe will arrive in Dhaka on October 16, and start the tour with a 50-overs practice match at the BKSP ground in Savar on October 19. The three-match ODI series begins on October 21 in Dhaka, before the two sides move to Chittagong for the second and third ODIs on October 24 and 26.Zimbabwe will play a three-day practice match in Chittagong from October 29 to 31, before going to Sylhet for the first Test, which begins on November 3. The second Test will be held from November 11 to 15.

Half-centuries from Heinrich Klaasen and JP Duminy helped South Africa chase down 189 with eight balls remaining

The Report by Karthik Krishnaswamy21-Feb-20182:31

Cullinan: Duminy stood up and played a captain’s innings

Scorecard and ball-by-ball detailsWhile much else has gone against them through the limited-overs leg of this tussle against India, rain has been South Africa’s friend, and Heinrich Klaasen a rare bright spark in a struggling batting line-up. Their only win of the ODI series featured rain and a destructive innings from Klaasen, and on Wednesday in Centurion, both ingredients were present in a series-levelling six-wicket win in the second T20I.Klaasen smacked 69 off 30 balls to give a chase of 189 the impetus it needed, and JP Duminy batted through to the end to finish unbeaten on 64 off 40, ending the game with a pair of sixes off Jaydev Unadkat in the 19th over of the innings.BCCI

Rain wasn’t necessarily a help to South Africa in the ODI win in Johannesburg – 202 in 28 overs was surely a more difficult chase than 290 in 50 – but it dulled the threat of India’s wristspinners; Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav struggled to grip an often wet ball and went for a combined 119 in 11.3 overs. Now Chahal, playing as the lone specialist spinner, endured another difficult night, going for 64 – the most by an India bowler in a T20I – in his four overs.A steady drizzle backdropped the early part of South Africa’s chase of 189. It never grew heavy enough to halt play, but it was persistent, and ensured Duckworth-Lewis calculations were always at the back of both teams’ minds. This was probably what prompted South Africa to promote Klaasen to No. 4, sending him in at a time when they needed 151 in 90 balls.South Africa were also nine runs behind the Duckworth-Lewis par score at that stage, for two wickets down, and Klaasen swiftly began to rectify that situation, pulling Unadkat for two sixes in the sixth over, and launching Chahal for another over long-on in the eighth over. That took care of the par score, and staying in touch with it meant South Africa’s chase was also on track.At the end of the 10th over, South Africa’s run rate was just under nine an over, and their required rate just over ten. Klaasen brought the two numbers into close proximity off the first ball of the eleventh over, lofting Chahal over extra-cover for six, and followed up three balls later with the shot of the match, a switch-hit six over point. By that stage Klaasen had hit five sixes and just one four.Worse was to follow for Chahal; his third over went for 23, with Klaasen hitting him for 6, 6 and 4 and then turning the strike over to Duminy, who promptly slog-swept him for another six. Klaasen fell at the start of the next over, swinging too early at an Unadkat offcutter to edge behind, and David Miller followed in the next over, miscuing a short ball from Hardik Pandya, giving India the glimpse of a way back into the game. They didn’t grab it, however, missing two chances in the 16th over, bowled by Chahal; MS Dhoni missed a leg-side stumping to reprieve Duminy on 40, and then Chahal himself dropped a return catch to let off Farhaan Behardien.As they did in the first T20I, India batted with a sense of abandon not usually seen in their T20 game after being sent in to bat. They began with a maiden, but that had more to do with Chris Morris’ new-ball swing than with Shikhar Dhawan’s intent – he swung rustically at a couple of balls in that scoreless first over. Junior Dala took out Rohit Sharma with his first ball, an inducker, but thereafter the runs began to flow, with South Africa’s quicks once again lapsing into bowling too short and Dhawan and Suresh Raina cashing in. Twenty came off the third over, Morris’ second, before Dhawan picked out mid-on off a full-toss from Duminy in the fifth over. Then Dala’s extra bounce sent Virat Kohli back for a rare low score, in an over that ended up as a wicket-maiden, and India were 45 for 3 after six.Raina and Manish Pandey rebuilt slowly at first, not finding the boundary once in the first 19 balls of their partnership, before Pandey’s leg-side hitting earned 19 off Tabraiz Shamsi in the 10th over. Raina’s dismissal in the 11th brought Dhoni to the crease, and he showed his intentions quite early, stepping out and hitting JT Smuts for a straight six off only the seventh ball he faced. Dhoni and Pandey would go on to add an unbroken 98 off 56 balls, 55 of those runs coming off the last five overs of India’s innings.South Africa fed Pandey’s naturally bottom-handed game with bowling that was often too short or too straight, and his eventual 48-ball 79 not out would contain 55 leg-side runs and only 24 through the off side. Dhoni clattered three fours and two sixes in the last two overs, the pick of them a flat, back-foot slap over the cover boundary off Dane Paterson, to finish with 52 not out off 28 balls. It was only his second T20I half-century, in his 88th match, and on another day could have ended up winning India the match.

Kane Williamson lamented a New Zealand batting display which did not adjust to a challenging pitch at Eden Park in the deciding ODI

Andrew McGlashan in Auckland04-Mar-2017Kane Williamson lamented a New Zealand batting display which did not adjust to a challenging pitch at Eden Park in the deciding ODI. For the second time in the series they were bowled out well inside the 50 overs, and though Williamson said conditions were difficult he believed the batsman could have been smarter.South Africa did not find it easy, either, until the target came into view and the chase was finished in a hurry. AB de Villiers said he would have been concerned with a chase of much over 200 and had targeted working through New Zealand for 150 after nabbing their big names early.Martin Guptill fell in the fifth over and by the end of the 16th, Williamson and Ross Taylor had also departed, the captain to a run-out after a poor call from Dean Brownlie.  There had only been six lower completed first innings at the ground, the most recent of those being 141 by Sri Lanka in 2004.”It was far from easy, but that’s when fight needs to be shown to get a competitive score,” Williamson said. “A lot of the time at Eden Park it’s hard to know what a good score is. So that’s where that assessment needs to take place and build those partnerships. We couldn’t do that today. South Africa bowled well and made it very tough.”As he had in Wellington, Williamson referenced the difficulty of rotating the strike on a drop-in wicket where the ball does not run easily over the square. That was particularly evident against Imran Tahir who bowled his ten overs for a stifling 14 runs – the thriftiest ten-over spell by a spinner in New Zealand – as he benefited from batsmen hemmed in by the early pressure.”It is tough to rotate the strike out there and when you are under pressure and lose wickets that is something you look to do to bring some momentum back and that wasn’t happening,” Williamson said. “You need to appreciate that at Eden Park and look to skin it another way. Perhaps our batting smarts weren’t quite where we needed to be.”We lost a number of wickets around Imran which made it difficult. We needed two guys to stick there for a death phase so we had wickets in hand so we could go harder.”Although New Zealand set a solid total in Christchurch and had the Guptill-inspired chase in Hamilton, this series has raised questions about areas of the top order, notably Guptill’s opening partner and how they shuffle the middle order to accommodate the allrounders and wicketkeeper.However, despite this hefty defeat which ended their unbeaten home record in ODI series dating back to 2014, Williamson believed it had been another season of solid white-ball results, with victories over Bangladesh and Australia.”We would have loved to have won the series, but there’s been some really, really good cricket played against some highly-ranked opposition. We’ve had a tough summer of one-day cricket,” he said. “There have been some steps of improvement, new guys have come in and done well and that’s all important moving forward. You want to breed that depth so guys can come in and make the difference. We’ve seen good signs of that.”New Zealand’s next one-day cricket is a triangular series in Ireland in May, also involving Bangladesh, before the Champions Trophy. New Zealand’s IPL-bound players, who include Williamson, Guptill, Trent Boult and Tim Southee, will be allowed to skip that series if their franchises are still in the tournament. Batsmen George Worker, Tom Bruce and Henry Nicholls will be in contention to fill in for the absentees, along with Seth Rance, Hamish Bennett and Scott Kuggeleijn with the ball.

Sri Lanka’s bowling coach Champaka Ramanayake is pleased with the way Lahiru Kumar has embellished his natural ability to bowl quickly with control and accuracy

Andrew Fidel Fernando in Johannesburg09-Jan-2017Of young players that have emerged for Sri Lanka over the past few months, perhaps none has been as surprising as the coming forth of Lahiru Kumara.He had had an excellent run in the Under-19 team, but when Test selection came for a tour of Zimbabwe, he merely appeared a placeholder quick until the more experienced bowlers returned from injury. Then, in his first match in South Africa – and third overall – Kumara collected the best-ever figures for a Sri Lanka fast bowler in the country, and also became the second-youngest Sri Lankan to claim a five-wicket haul.Coaches and selectors are enthused by how quickly he has come on, and how much he may yet improve. He needs to work on his control, bowling coach Champaka Ramanayake said, but what Kumara has always had is pace. He was clocked at nearly 145kph at Newlands.”He’s bowling 140kph plus, you know? He’ll bowl 150 very soon,” said Ramanayake. “He’s just 19-plus and he’s learning. To get six wickets here against one of the best teams – he bowled some brilliant balls. If he can get more consistency with that length, he can be a very good bowler.”The pace has come from genetics, so he’s always had that. But if he keeps improving general fitness, strengthening and conditioning work, he will get there. Especially when you’re at 23 or 24, your body becomes fully matured. That’s the time they’ll bowl fast.”Kumara had been in Sri Lanka’s age-group teams for at least four years, touring Malaysia with the Under-15 side, before graduating to the Under-19 team in 2014, aged 17. His breakthrough series had been in England last year, where he claimed 11 for 134 in a Youth Test in Northampton.”At the age of 15 he had been identified, but when the Under-19 tours came, he was really highlighted,” Ramanayake said. “He always had the pace, but he was a bit short and wild. Young fast bowlers tend to be like that through that period. But then we worked with him on hitting that length, and he has a natural ability to bowl good inswingers. The length was short, but we’ve worked on that. Now he’s much better.”The inswing had seen Kumara put a ball through Hashim Amla’s defence in the first innings at Newlands, but later that same innings, he also got balls to leave the right-hander off the seam, after having angled it into the stumps.”Now he’s working on the away-seamer as well. Because he bowls wide of the crease, sometimes he bowls that away one, which is very difficult because of the angle. He’s always had a good short ball. I’m not worried about pace. I want him to bowl more on the right spot. He’s fast, so if he hits that length it’s on to the batsman quickly. No time for them. You can see that he’s improving.”Sri Lanka’s fast-bowling stocks are regularly ravaged by injury, however, and avoiding long layoffs is among the many challenges that Kumara now faces. This series is being played without Dhammika Prasad, who had been Sri Lanka’s best seam bowler in 2015, but has not played a Test since October of that year due to recurring shoulder trouble. Suranga Lakmal, Nuwan Pradeep and Dushmantha Chameera – who are on the tour – had also been sidelined for months, at different times last year.”When you have a youngster you have to manage him,” Ramanayake said. “You never know – anytime you can get a stress fractures and all. We have to look after him. Fitness-wise, he’s still raw and we’ll have to build him up slowly.”With Kumara’s emergence, Sri Lanka now have two quicks who may potentially operate in the high 145-150kph range. Chameera, who suffered a stress fracture in May last year, had previously bowled as fast as 149kph on a tour of New Zealand. He was a long way from his best on his Test return at Port Elizabeth, but Ramanayake is confident the pace will return in time.”Dushy had a stress fracture and after a stress fracture you are always not sure about giving 100%. He was one of our best bowlers before he got injured, and he’ll come back definitely. I’m not sure whether he’s playing this Johannesburg Test or not, but in the future, if we have two bowlers who can bowl at 145kph-plus, any side will be very happy. A little bit more bowling will help him.”