Chandimal, Dananjaya likely to miss Asia Cup
06th-Sep-2018
Sri Lankan wicket keeper batsman Dinesh Chandimal is expected to be ruled out of the Asia Cup 2018 due to a hairline fracture in his middle finger.
On September 1st Sri Lanka has announced their final squad for the upcoming Asia Cup tournament to be played in United Arab Emirates from September 15. In that squad Dinesh Chandimal has been added as the wicket keeper batsman after completing his ban of six International games including two Tests and four ODIs for the ball tampering issues happened during the second test or Caribbean tour.
Unfortunately he is now suffering from a hairline fracture in his middle finger of the right hand that happened in the recently concluded Sri Lanka's domestic T20I tournament. Chandimal will likely be replaced by Niroshan Dickwella who is on standby after missing out on the initial squad.
Earlier, Niroshan Dickwella was supposed to make way for Dinesh Chandimal in the one-off T20I game against South Africa and the same thing happened in the squad for Asia Cup too. It is expected that the selectors will make a call on Chandimal's injury in upcoming week.
Simultaneously Sri Lanka will miss the service of another player in the group stage of the tournament. The off spinner Akila Dananjaya is expected to miss the first two game for Sri Lanka due to the birth of his first child. But still there is no official call on this matter too.
Lankans will badly miss the services of their off spinner as he is the main instrumental in Sri Lanka's victory in limited over formats in recent times.
Sri Lanka will face Bangladesh in the tournament opener on September 15, with their next game set for September 17 against Afghanistan.And this will sums up their group stage of the tournament.