Sports Medicine & Player Management – a key role in Injury prevention

Tuesday, August 8, 2017 - srilankacricket.lk

Colombo, 8th August 2017

A heavy investment in Sports medicine & Player Management over the past 6 months with the recruitment of specialized Trainers and Physios as well as implementation of state-of-the-art assessment and monitoring systems has begun to pay dividends in injury management of the National Performance Squad.

Key players such as Suranga Lakmal (Fatigue) who sat out the 2nd Test against India and Rangana Herath (Back Stiffness) who will sit out the 3rd Test are being coined ‘unavailable for selection’ by the Sports Medicine Team (SMT) based on their chronic workloads leading up to the games and the scientific data that show an increased risk of injury accordingly.

At a discussion held with NPS players, National Selectors and Officials of SLC last evening, High Performance Rehabilitation Manager – Nirmalan Thanabalasingam and National Trainer – Nick Lee, expounded on the importance of crunching the numbers and respecting the Science which was what saw the marked difference in the performance of Kusal Mendis in the second innings of the SSC Test where he put on a gutsy 110 runs together with Dimuth Karunaratne (141).

Thanabalasingam and Lee both acknowledged that as with all implementation of all drastic measures, the strict implementation of the Player Management system would have its own teething problems before beginning to pay tangible dividends, and requested all stakeholders alike to have faith in the Science and give it time to show the anticipated results.

A lack of interest and/or investment into areas such as Player Management (Workload, Injury, Rehabilitation) over the past decade has left the Sri Lankan side depleted and injury prone, and having identified this blackhole early on in taking office, the elected administration have made a concerted effort to rectify this anomaly with heavy investment into the areas of High Performance and Sports Medicine.

As with ingestion of treatment for an illness where it is a scientifically proven fact that the symptoms first get worse before getting better, so too does the body react to intensified conditioning. Therefore we appeal to all true cricket lovers to have patience while the applied measures and sciences run their course and begin to show the result we all look for – a World Champion Sri Lanka once again!

Let’s continue to stand together as One Team, One Nation!