Angelo Mathews, the Sri Lankan skipper, spoke about his shock over Shaminda Eranga’s heart condition on Monday (June 20) ahead of the first One-Day International against England.
While warming up in the innings break during the second ODI against Ireland, Eranga complained of uneasiness to Mathews. “At the time he called me and said ‘something has happened to me’,” Mathews said. “He was warming up and just before we went on the field, he said something happened to me, can you touch my heart because it is beating fast. I felt something unusual so I quickly called the physio and the physio went for the doctor with him. It was a shocking incident.”
Eranga was immediately rushed to a hospital in Dublin since his heartbeat was recorded at a high 220 beats per minute. He has now been discharged from the hospital after getting the clearance from the doctors to fly back home.
On Sunday, Eranga also received another blow, with the ICC suspending him from bowling in international cricket due to an illegal action after getting reported during the second Test against England.
“It has been a tough 48 hours for him,” Mathews said, “And the whole team is behind him and we are fully supportive of him. It was an unfortunate incident just before we went on to the field.”
“It’s another unfortunate incident where his action has proved to be illegal and he will have to go back and work with the fast-bowling coaches and come back strong.”
“We are very confident he will come through both - his condition as well as his action - so we are very supportive of him and the whole team are behind him.”
With Dushmantha Chameera and Dhammika Prasad getting injured, Eranga’s absence will now force Sri Lanka to add another pacer to their squad. The island nation were comfortably beaten by hosts England in the Test series but showed signs of improvements as the series kept progressing and that’s something Mathews believes will help the team in the ODIs.
“It was pretty unfortunate that we haven’t performed well in the Test series but we kept improving game by game and as time went on we really started hitting our straps and we had some convincing wins in Ireland,” he said.
“But England is a completely different team, we still have to play our best cricket to beat them here. We haven’t done well in the recent past but we’ve played a lot of T20 games rather than one-dayers. We are a forceful unit when it comes to one-dayers, we’ve got a good set of guys and a bit of experience.”
Cricbuzz
