For Sri Lanka’s Test and ODI cricket captain Dimuth Karunaratne the curfew imposed by the government to curb the dreaded Coronavirus has given him a God-given chance to spend time with his family.
“Focus on cricket is less these days but we are maintaining our fitness and we have time to spend with our families which is something we don’t get when we are playing cricket around the year,” Karunaratne told the Daily News.
“We won’t get a chance like this to spend time with our families. When we have the chance we must try to maximise it without using it towards cricket,” he said.
Speaking further Karunaratne said, “Most of the time we are at practice or spending times in hotels or we are overseas. This is the first time after a long period I have spent a week at home without going anywhere. My mother is extremely happy because I have time to spend time with her and sit down and have a meal with her.
This relationship we can bond it these days and I am focussing a lot on that with cricket taking a back seat.
“I have put cricket out of my mind because there is no point thinking of it. We don’t know when we will play our next series.”
Sri Lanka’s next opponents are South Africa who are due to tour the country in June for 3 ODIs and 3 T20Is but with the strict government restrictions imposed on travel to the country whether the series will take place as scheduled is doubtful.
How does the Lankan captain spend the day at home apart from being with his family – he lives with his wife Anuradha and his parents at Battaramulla.
“These days I do the fitness training schedule sent to us by the trainer in the mornings and evenings at home either with weights, if you have them at home or with the body weight,” explained Karunaratne.
“I watch movies, and do some gardening I have a big garden and spend time with my pet dog a Labrador. In the night I make some meal whatever I require from what is available at home. After that I watch a movie and then go to sleep.
“Sometimes I read a book related to cricket otherwise I watch some cricket CD’s. Recently I watched a prime time video the Australia-England Ashes series. I mix it up each day so that I don’t get bored,” he said.
Sitting it out of cricket is nothing new to Karunaratne who has done so many times when he has suffered injuries.
“I have experienced this many times through injuries sometimes I have been away from cricket for 2-3 months. I’ve had a lot of injuries. In the previous World Cup (2015) I broke my finger and was out for two months. It is like sitting out on an injury,” he said.
Karunaratne was of the view that it was not that difficult to come back to playing international cricket after a long layoff as long as you maintain your fitness.
“If you are doing your fitness and maintaining your body, to get there is not a problem. What we have to do is put double the effort at practice to catch up on the lost days. If we bat for about 3 hours a day, we bat against the bowling machine for another 30 minutes to one hour. What you have missed during your layoff you must find a way to catch up. As professional cricketers we know that. Once we begin practices all this will fall into our routine,” said Karunaratne.
How good or bad is this break from cricket?
“Percentage wise it’s 50-50. Being unable to play cricket is unfortunate because it’s a sport we love and it’s our profession. To keep away from it is a loss, we lose our momentum and body rhythm etc.,” said Karunaratne.
“The current situation we are placed is not something we expected so we must try to make use of it to our advantage. Instead of staying at home and sleeping, we can train more than we do at other times and spend time with the family. There are a lot of things you miss when you are playing cricket, now you can catch upon them in the days we are at home. Otherwise every time we say we are busy because of cricket.”
Karunaratne said that he has not experienced much difficulty with regards to getting food items.
“I am staying at Battaramulla and most of the media people whom I know whenever they get the opportunity they bring what I require because they have the facilities to move about during curfew hours. There are no big issues with regard to food. We have stored some goods before the curfew was imposed so we can manage until it finishes, after that only we’ll have to see,” Karunaratne said.
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