By Amindha de Alwis  

Sri Lanka captain Dimuth Karunaratne was full of praise for Dinesh Chandimal and debutant Prabath Jayasuriya whose efforts with bat and ball respectively allowed Sri Lanka to make a sharp turnaround after the team’s sub-par performance in the first Test.  

Sri Lanka won the second Test by an innings and 36 runs, and while Australia retained the Warne-Muralitharan Trophy, the hosts managed to draw the two-match series.  

Instrumental to that was Dinesh Chandimal and Prabath Jayasuriya – the former making his first Test double century and the highest individual score for a Sri Lankan against Australia, while the latter had the best Test debut bowling figures for a Sri Lankan.   

“When your senior player gives a knock like that, as captain it makes things easy for me. Angelo can fail, I can fail, but I know that someone will fire for us. That is a good sign for the series ahead,” Karunaratne said of Chandimal’s career-best unbeaten 206.  

Jayasuriya was handed his Test cap after a string of Covid-19 cases within the squad and grabbed his opportunity wholeheartedly, with his match-nag of 12 for 177, the fourth-best overall returns for a debutant. The captain pointed out that his patience and consistency with the ball was a key difference from the previous game.  

“He (Jayasuriya) bowled well in the National Super League. I skippered him. He played a game in Galle and took 13 wickets. One reason why we lost the first Test was we did not have patience to bowl in one area. I had confidence in Prabath and he did the job for us. He used his experience and did a great job,” he said  
Australia Captain Pat Cummins, meanwhile, said that the broader picture of his side’s tour of Sri Lanka amidst the economic and political crisis faced by the island had been the subject of much conversation among the touring group.  

“We spent two years basically stuck at home during Covid and our last two tours had been to Pakistan where we had not toured in 20-odd years, and now Sri Lanka in the middle of a country in crisis.”  

“We have got protests around the ground; it really hits home how lucky we are to be travelling the world, but also in some ways it is more than just being here to play cricket; you can see the impact it can have. So, it has not been lost on our group; it is something we speak about quite a bit,” he said following the conclusion of the all-format series.  

Cummins went on to say that while they received many concerned messages from those in Australia, the team did not feel in any danger. 

“The protests (on Saturday), you could not escape it. We got lots of messages from back home, just saying ‘how is it, hope you’re ok’ and we felt totally fine. But you could hear when it changed from protests into a party. And chatting to a couple of the girls, staff around the hotel, and a couple of the drivers, they are doing it really tough. One day eating, one day off eating to try to feed their kids, it is really tough,” he shared.  

With Sri Lanka having managed to draw the Test series 1-1 with a comprehensive innings victory on Monday, the 29-year-old skipper said it was a reality check on the challenges of touring.  

“It is a good reality check for people touring over here that it is really hard. So many positives out of last week (First Test) that we did find methods that work, and one small hiccup does not mean you have to change everything,” Cummins said.