Sa’adi Thawfeeq reporting from Australia
BRISBANE: There is nothing more frustrating for a cricketer than to sit out a match through injury knowing fully well that he should have been out there in the middle helping his team beat the opposition. When the opponent you are playing against happens to be the best team in the world then the frustration can become two-fold.
For Kumar Sangakkara, the Sri Lankan vice-captain and leading batsman of the team, the past 14 days have been one of disappointment and exasperation. Bad luck comes in many ways and for Sangakkara one of the fittest players in the team it came in the most unexpected manner.
In Sri Lanka’s opening match of their current Australian tour against Cricket Australia Chairman’s XI, Sangakkara had to wait for three and a half hours before going out to bat. He had been in for only 13 minutes and faced just three balls when disaster struck.
“We had a great opening stand in that game (Jayasuriya and Atapattu putting on 195). I was sitting around for about three hours waiting to go into bat doing a few stretches.
It was a cold day and I should have probably paid a little more attention to warming my muscles up before I went in,” Sangakkara told The Nation.
‘It went off in the third ball I faced. As soon as it happened I knew I had pulled something. I felt a completely new sensation which I had never felt before. I thought hopefully it was not so serious. I managed to pull it in the last three steps getting into the crease onto the other side.
“I wanted to make use of a runner and keep batting, but Tommy (Simsek, the physio) was smart enough to realise that I had to come off the field quickly enough. It stopped the bleeding and the injury in the muscle. At that point I was pretty lucky to have Tommy around with his experience knowing exactly what to do. I walked away to the dressing room pretty angry and disappointed that it had happened,” he said.
Sangakkara blamed the injury partly to his negligence and to the fact that he had to wait for a long time before going out to bat.
“It was an unusually cold day in Adelaide. We had a fantastic start and I can’t remember in the past two years when I had my pads on for so long waiting to go into bat. It was also a practice game. Sometimes when you are in that situation you can forget to pay attention to some of the other details that are important. Usually I have a routine that I follow with my stretching,” said Sangakkara.
“Fitness is something that I take a lot of pride. I’ve been working very hard on it, in my weight training, my running and my conditioning. You can have all of those perfectly planned but a little slip-up somewhere could be costly. It was negligence on my part. I was pretty angry with myself for allowing it to happen.
“When you don’t get injured for some time you kind of feel invincible. When you start thinking like that and when you haven’t had an injury, you think your body is fine. When suddenly you get one, you feel really bad. Tommy said that it has made me come crashing down to earth. From now on I know I’ve got to pay a little more attention to making sure my muscles are warm when I go out to bat,” he said.
This is the first time Sangakkara had suffered an injury of this nature in his 67-Test career which had made him miss a Test match.
“I looked to this tour for a long time. Australia is a place I love to come to and play cricket. To sit out and watch the other guys get on the field and be involved in the competition I feel a bit jealous,” said Sangakkara.
“You know guys have to sit out at certain periods of their career. I had to do that through injury this time. But I have an opportunity to contribute having a chat and encouraging the guys from outside making sure that everything is taken care of off the field. I am still involved in it but I’d rather be out on the field,” he said.
The 30-year-old one-down batsman is making good progress and is hopeful he would be fit enough to be selected for the second Test starting at Hobart five days from today.
“The key was the first 24 hours after the injury. I had ice on every two hours on the affected area to curtail the bleeding into the muscle. I didn’t get any sleep that night icing the area for a minimum of 20 minutes every two hours. I did it completely throughout the night till about 7 in the morning. That’s what set about the foundation for a good recovery.
“I am back to about 70 percent speed-wise. I’ve been batting for three days with absolutely no pain or any other sensations. It is just a case of making sure that I am 100 percent fit at running between wickets because that’s important. I’ve got to get back to 100 percent fitness to stand a chance of playing because the pressure of running against the ball and the fielders is when you put extra stress. That’s when hamstring injuries can happen again. I’ve got to make sure that there is no chance of that happening because we’ve got Test match cricket coming up a week after we go back to Sri Lanka.”
Asked how the team took up his loss Sangakkara said: “There was a lot of support from the guys. They were very disappointed for me. It was nice to have all the guys coming and saying ‘well, hard luck we would love to have you, take care of yourself.’ The other thing is that it presented a nice opportunity for someone to go and play a Test match for the country. It is good to see that we have the strength to refill the position. No player is indispensable and that is something I believe in very strongly.”
****
No comments:
Post a Comment