Herath to sit out 3rd Test
Colombo, 8th August 2017
Sri Lanka Cricket today (8) confirmed that veteran Spinner Rangana Herath will sit out the 3rd Test against India at Pallakelle.
The decision comes as a result of SLC’s Sports Medicine Unit declaring Herath ‘unavailable for selection’ due to an increased risk of injury calculated from his workload leading up to the 3rd Test.
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 Unit (SMU) based on their chronic workloads leading up to the games and the scientific data that show an increased risk of injury accordingly.
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 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.
Sri Lanka are due to announce the squad for the 3rd Test upon ratification of the Minister of Sport and will travel to Kandy later on today.
