Sri Lanka vs India: Injured Kusal Perera gets ruled out
What's the story
The Sri Lankan cricket team has suffered a blow as senior batter Kusal Perera has been ruled out of both the ODIs and T20Is against India due to a shoulder injury.
Sri Lanka will now be without their first-choice wicket-keeper, as their next option - Niroshan Dickwella is under suspension following a bio-bubble breach on the recent tour of England.
Here are further details.
Duo
Shoulder sprain for Perera, Binura Fernando suffers ankle injury
According to Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), Perera suffered a right shoulder sprain while training.
Meanwhile, pacer Binura Fernando, who made his ODI debut in Bangladesh in May, has also sustained an injury.
Fernando has suffered a lateral ligament sprain to his left ankle during a training session on Thursday and will miss the ODI series, starting on July 18.
Captaincy
Perera has also lost his captaincy
Perera lost his captaincy recently after having only been appointed as the team's skipper in May 2021.
The top-order batter has been replaced by Dasun Shanaka.
Besides losing all three series under Perera, Sri Lanka were below-par on the field.
Meanwhile, Perera was deemed to have played a crucial role in the contracts standoff between the players and board, over the past few months.
Numbers
Perera was woeful against England recently
Perera, who was the Lankan captain in his side's tour of England, scored one fifty as he had a forgettable tour.
He notched scores of 30, 21, 3, 73, 0, and 9 in the white-ball series.
Mendis has 3,071 runs in ODIs at 31.65.
He has racked up 1,347 runs in T20Is at 27.48.
SL vs IND
India's tour of Sri Lanka to start from July 18
India's tour of Sri Lanka which was set to start on July 13 will now take place from July 18 onwards.
BCCI secretary Jay Shah confirmed the same last Saturday after the series was rescheduled on Friday by Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC).
This was due to positive cases of COVID-19 to members of the Sri Lankan team set-up.
Information
Sri Lanka's batting looks weak in absence of big players
With Mendis getting ruled out and Dickwella under suspension, Lanka's batting looks feeble. Besides the two players, the likes of Kusal Mendis and Danushka Gunathilaka were also suspended for the bio-bubble breach in England.