Lasith Embuldeniya, who took a blow to his hand while attempting a catch in the 2nd Test between Sri Lanka and South Africa at St George’s Park, Port Elizabeth, has been ruled out for 6 weeks, with a dislocated thumb.
Embuldeniya, tossed the ball up to South Africa’s Kagiso Rabada and saw it driven firmly back to him at a catchable height. Despite looking like a regulation chance off his own bowling, the ball seemed to hit the top of Embuldeniya’s thumb of his bowling arm and the youngster immediately pulled up in pain.
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Footage from the game showed some bleeding and the left-arm spinner was taken off the field and straight to the hospital for scans where it was found that he would require surgery to fix the dislocated thumb – an injury that will see him miss up to 6 weeks of action.
It is quite a heavy blow to Sri Lanka, especially considering Embuldeniya’s contributions in the 1st Test where he played a fighting knock in the 1st innings to bring Sri Lanka within striking distance of South Africa’s total and then picked up a 5 wicket haul in the 2nd innings to help his team restrict the hosts to 259.
Late wickets peg Sri Lanka back on day 1
When Sri Lanka landed on the shores of South Africa a couple of weeks ago, they had one word on their lips
Sri Lanka will now have to rely on the three frontline bowlers in the team, Suranga Lakmal, Kasun Rajitha and Vishwa Fernando – all fast bowlers, to do most of the work and hope that part-timers Dhananjaya De Silva and captain Dimuth Karunaratne can at least partly make up for the loss of the left arm spinner.
Embuldeniya is reportedly expected to undergo surgery this evening and is unlikely to take further part in the Test with either bat or ball.
