Dimuth Karunaratne, Dinesh Chandimal and Lahiru Thirimanne have returned to the Sri Lanka squad of 18 players after accepting and signing their new contracts for the year 2021, Sri Lanka Cricket said.
The batting trio that easily made up the backbone of the Sri Lanka line-up in Test and ODI cricket were sideline after the Bangladesh home Test series and missed the limited overs tour of England and the subsequent T20 and ODI home encounters against India.
Although yet to be named in the designated squad for any series, Chandimal has virtually batted his way back into the Sri Lanka team with two half centuries playing and captaining a domestic team called the SLC Reds in an on-going T20 quadrangular in Pallekele.
“It is refreshing to note that Chandimal is back among the runs,” said a Sri Lanka Cricket official.
Chandimal is expected to line-up for an upcoming home series against South Africa in September with Sri Lanka still looking to fill some middle order slots that were exposed during the T20 and ODI series against India.
“Sri Lanka Cricket wishes to announce that 18 players signed the National Player Contracts for a five month period ending December 31, 2021. The players signed the contracts without any deviation from the contracts offered previously, which was formulated by Sri Lanka Cricket along with the Technical Advisory Committee,” SLC said in a Statement.
The Statement said the players were chosen under four categories and were “nominated by the Selection Panel based on a set of criteria such as Performance, Fitness, Leadership/Seniority, Professionalism/Code of Conduct and Future/Adaptability.”
“The criteria and the allocation of points to individual players were shared among the players before they signed the contracts,” the Statement further added.
The five-match ODI and T20 series against South Africa will mark Sri Lanka’s final international preparation before the scheduled T20 World Cup in the UAE starting in mid October.