BipinDani
Less than 48-hours before the commencement of the first and the only Test against Afghanistan, the Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) has announced the squad and accordingly, the 16-players have already joined the team hotel on Tuesday / Wednesday.
The first training session of the team was scheduled to take place on Wednesday (2-5 pm) at the SSC ground, where the Test match is to be played from February 2.
The 16-players, who have joined the team hotel are : Dhananjaya De Silva, KusalMendis, Angelo Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal, DimuthKarunratne, SadeeraSamarwickrama, ChamikaGunasekara, Ramesh Mendis, Vishwa Fernando, Ashita Fernando, PrabathJayasuriya, Milan Ratnanayake, LahiruUdara, KasunRajitha, KamninduMendis and Nisan Madhushka,
There has been no change in the support staff which served the team against the last series against Zimbabwe, except the trainer. Sri Lanka’s DilshanFonseka will train the home team for the series against Afghanistan, it is learned here.
According to the highly placed sources in the Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), he will take charge from GayanWeerarathne, the Strength and Conditioning coach (S&C), who was in charge of the Lankan team against recent Zimbabwe series
The visiting Afghanistan team has its first training session in Sri Lanka on Wednesday morning (10 am -1 pm).
Interestingly, this will be the first time Afghanistan is facing Sri Lanka in the Test match. Afghanistan have so far played only seven Tests since their debut five years ago. The last Test, they played against Bangladesh in June last year and lost by a whopping 546 runs in Mirpur.
Apart from the one-off Test, which begins on Friday at the SSC ground in Colombo, the visiting team will also play three ODIs and T20Is in Kandy and Dambulla.
