Dinesh Chandimal rates India series whitewash as the worst of his career

The home side were outplayed in every department of the game as Sri Lanka failed to mount a challenge in any of the three Tests as they suffered one batting collapse after the other while the Indian batsmen feasted on Sri Lanka's ordinary bowling attack scoring 600-plus totals in each of the first two Tests. This also resulted in none of the three Tests lasting the full five days as India secured their first ever away series whitewash with ease and Chandimal acknowledged this fact saying, “We were not able to take the games to five days. I am disappointed that if we could have dragged the game to the fifth day we could have learned something, but losing within two and half days you cannot give any excuses,” and added, “As an opener, you should at least bat for 15 to 20 overs. As I said, we gave some game plan to each and every player. They have to execute them when in the middle. We failed to do that in the series and that cost us dearly I would say.”

However, a lot of Sri Lanka's failures with the bat can be attributed to Chandimal's own failures at the crease as the skipper failed to lead his side from the front with the bat in the series and he took complete responsibility for the same saying, “As a captain, I would like to take the responsibility. The fans have always supported us. They encourage us always. Today we saw despite losing, people applauding us. That is what the team needs now. We cannot let the players be mentally down. We are doing the process right. We might not get results soon, but we are confident that the future looks good.”

“During training, we are doing a lot of hard work. We had some game plan and we spoke so many things during the game. As a player when you have to go to the middle you have to put them to practice. That was what the batsmen were unable to do. As players, we had to stand up and do our performances well.”