Sri Lanka needs a strong domestic structure like India's: Karunaratne

Sri Lanka captain Dimuth Karunaratne on Friday was frank in his admission that their new crop of players is being unable to bridge the gap between domestic and international cricket. Sri Lanka is out of the World Cup with only eight points from eight games and the skipper said that the transition phase is taking more time due to the standard of domestic structure which is not at par with India.

"I think if you take the other countries, they played lots of cricket, like IPL and the domestic structure in India, that's really, really good," Karunaratne said on the eve of the game against India here. "And in Sri Lanka, we have only one domestic season (tournament). And after that, if they’ve performed well, they are identified and after that, when you come to the international level, there’s a huge gap," the skipper added.

Karunaratne wants more and younger Sri Lankan boys to start playing different franchise leagues. "We have to cross that gap and we have to play lots of cricket, give the chance to players to go and play IPL, BBL or English County League (T20). These are the things I’m expecting from the cricket board after this World Cup,” he said.

He agreed that a fresh plan needs to be put in place as there have been too many changes to the side. "We started rebuilding the side after 2015 but unfortunately the players who came in couldn’t perform very well. And that time we had to change lots of players. But after this World Cup, we’re trying to have a special plan and identify the players who can produce the goods,” he said.

The takeaways for Sri Lanka from this World Cup are openers Avishka Fernando and Kusal Janith Perera. "I think if you take the batting line-up -- Avishka (Fernando) and Kusal (Perera) did well. Avishka has been doing really good. He got three games and he showed that he can produce runs for Sri Lanka. And he’s one of the future stars. And if you take the bowling line-up, they did really well, especially Lasith Malinga and Nuwan Pradeep."

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)