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Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) has made a change to their World Cup 2023 squad. An injured Matheesha Pathirana has been replaced by veteran all-rounder Angelo Mathews for the remainder of the tournament.
Earlier, SLC had announced that Mathews and pacer Dushmantha Chameera would join the squad as injury covers.
"Sri Lanka Cricket wishes to announce that Angelo Mathews and Dushmantha Chameera will join the team in India as traveling reserves," an official statement read on October 19. "The Sri Lanka Cricket Selectors took this decision in order to ensure that the team has ready replacements in place to face contingencies, such as an injury to an existing squad member," the statement read.
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Pathirana was not in the best of form in the two games he played in the tournament. Against South Africa, he conceded 95 runs and picked up one wicket in Delhi. In Hyderabad against Pakistan, he conceded 90 runs and picked up one wicket as Mohammad Rizwan and Abdullah Shafique's centuries guided them to highest highest-ever run chase in the tournament’s history.
Mathews is a veteran all-rounder capable of preventing middle-order collapse and chipping in with a few overs. He has scored 5,865 runs from 191 innings at an average of 41.01 including three centuries and 40 fifties. With the ball, he has 120 wickets including one fifer and two four-fers. Mathews has been a veteran of three ODI World Cups. He has scored 533 runs from 17 innings at an average of 533 including one century and two half-centuries. His last ODI appearance was against Afghanistan in June where the visitors won by six wickets.
The winners of the 1996 edition of the World Cup have been placed ninth in the points table with just one win over the Netherlands from four games they have played. Also, their net run rate (NRR) is inferior to Bangladesh and the Netherlands.
They will face bottom-placed defending champions England at M.Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru on October 26.
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