Faf Du Plessis led South Africa will arrive in Sri Lanka this evening for the bilateral series. During their 42 days stay in the Island, South Africa to play Two tests, five ODIs and one-off T20I.
The first test between two sides to kick off from 12th July in Galle. While it will be a tough challenge for Faf du Plessis’ team on spin-friendly conditions, the hosts too would look to come back strongly after the ball-tampering saga saw their skipper Dinesh Chandimal miss the third Test of the series against the West Indies. Knowing the situation, Du Plessis has already started the mind game against Sri Lanka as he has stated that the International Cricket Council must get stricter with the charges to stop the menace of ball-tampering.
“They have to (be stricter). It’s happening too often. They definitely need to do that as quickly as possible. I know they met a while ago but it doesn’t look like anything has changed. It’s still the same rules and stuff, so they need to change that. The penalties needs to be harsher for ball tampering.
“I have probably said it too much but there are too many grey areas when it comes to the ICC and the rules. One, you want clarity and, two, you want consistency and that’s definitely something that’s not been part of that body of laws for a while now,” he said.
“There’s a lot of captains that have been speaking about it for a lot of years so, hopefully, when they do bring in all these new things there will be a lot of clarity and, most importantly, consistency for all teams.”
Chandimal is likely to get a reprieve from Sri Lanka’s cricket administrators after they said that further sanctions are unlikely as the Sri Lankan skipper did not intentionally tamper the ball. Sports minister Faiszer Mustapha, who is currently supervising the functioning of Sri Lanka cricket, said that ICC’s sanctions were sufficient but he was ‘disturbed’ by the team’s decision to delay play against West Indies in the St.Lucia Test.
However, Chandimal’s Participation in the test series is still not confirmed, as ICC Will announce its verdict on him on July 10.
