Danushka Gunathilika and Niroshan Dickwella formed the best opening partnership for Sri Lanka in a year where their team won only 5 and lost 27 ODI matches. They batted together 9 times and amassed 618 runs with a stunning average of 68.66.
Yet, team management opted to pick Upul Tharanga at the top, even though both Gunathilika and Dickwella were the part of the squad. The partnership was broken, Gunathilika played as a opener and Dickwella batted in middle order and both failed miserably in the three match series against India.
Fan’s were furious with this unnecessary reshuffle, especially as Gunathilika and Dickwella created a world record of two consecutive double hundred partnerships earlier in the year.
“@RusselArnold69 see what happens when you play @NiroshanDikka in the middle?
Who make such stupid decisions? We had a great opening partnership with him at top.
And no @KusalMendis1 to tackle spin in the middle
#DepressedSLfan
@skegpot @KumarSanga2 @MahelaJay @RoshanCricket” wrote CA Praveen.
“How stupid should selectors should be to send Dikka down the order #INDvSL” wrote Shaminda Kularathne.
“@SajeewaRath @daniel86cricket @RusselArnold69 Opening is not just abt individual contributions.It’s abt patnership.DG & Dikka did bettr with avg over 60. None of them did well with upul.Luk at our opening patnership in recent past.Upul has experience.So ideally It Will help in middle orders.Btw, u will not understand this😂” wrote Kalhara Hapuarachchi.
“Dickwella averages 33.04 this year but most of these runs have come as an opener. In the four games he’s not opened, he’s scored just 56 runs at 18.66.
#INDvSL” wrote the Cricket Prof.
