Sri Lanka’s Malinga ruled out of World T20 due to knee injury
Sri Lanka’s World Twenty20 title defence suffered a huge blow after fast bowler Lasith Malinga was ruled out of the tournament due to a knee injury, the team said on Friday.
Malinga was forced to hand over the captaincy to Angelo Mathews last week due to a slow recovery from the injury and missed the Super 10 opener against Afghanistan on Thursday.
“Malinga’s knee injury flared up before the match against Afghanistan yesterday,” a team spokesperson said.
“He has been ruled out of the World Cup and has flown back to Sri Lanka this afternoon.”
The 32-year-old paceman with blond-tinted hair and an unorthodox action is not quite the same player who was a key figure in Sri Lanka’s progress to three World Twenty20 finals in the last four tournaments.
He was, however, considered key to their success in India, where he has performed admirably in the Indian Premier League.
“Sri Lanka team management on tour have observed that Malinga whose niggling injury has been flaring up would be better off resting it, and have recommended he return to Colombo,” Sri Lanka Cricket said in a statement.
The selectors will choose Malinga’s replacement after practice matches between the remaining players in the World T20 squad to be played in Colombo later on Friday.
Sri Lanka will take on 2012 champions West Indies in their second Group One match in Bangalore on Sunday.
(Reuters)
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‘He was, however, considered key to their success in India, where he has performed admirably in the Indian Premier League.’ Yes, in IPL.. But Indians like his bawling and mastered how to cope with it. Totally in effective in India. No one is indispensable and it is better for Malinga to have a rest.
why not send Ajantha Mendis who as kept many a records in the 20/20 and also in all formats of the game but was thrown out of the Sri Lanka Squad the very next day he was selected by the elite ICC panel to be the best one day bowler in the world for the year 2014 inspite of the blocks placed by the captain and selectors the same panel selected him to be the only Sri Lanka cricketer to be in the world eleven for 2014 no Sanga no Mahela no Angelo Mathews No Lasith Malinga No Herath any cricket fan can access the ICC site and obtain the credible information how a cricketer was completely demoralized and also we loosing the 2015 world cup due to captain and the senior cricketers jealousy which is continuing even now