Dhananjaya de Silva gets out hit-wicket in bizarre fashion

Hit-wicket dismissals are very rare in international cricket. But two batters have suffered the same fate in a space of 12-13 hours. Harshal Patel was the one who disturbed the bails with his bat during the third T20I against New Zealand in Kolkata on Sunday (November 21). Sri Lanka’s Dhananjaya de Silva’s mode of dismissal was also the same on Monday morning during the first session of opening Test match against West Indies.

The second day’s play is currently in progress and in the first half an hour itself, Dhananjaya got out for no technical fault of his. After ending the opening day strongly at 273/4 thanks to Dimuth Karunaratne’s century and De Silva’s fifty, the unbeaten duo would’ve hoped to strengthen the team’s position.

However, the 95th over of the innings which Shannon Gabriel was bowling brought the much needed success for West Indies on the second morning. The pace bowler delivered a harmless back of a length delivery outside off which the batter stood on the backfoot and defended.

Defensive shot gone wrong for Dhananjaya de Silva

But he did it with the soft hands which meant the ball trickled backwards and was landing on the stumps. Dhananjaya de Silva tried to change the direction of the ball with his bat but couldn’t do it in the first attempt. He panicked and tried to do it again with the other side of the bat only to disturb the leg-stump himself.

He was livid with himself and saved his face with the bat. Dhananjaya was batting so beautifully in the middle and looked set for a big score only to end his promising knock in a bizarre fashion.

Nevertheless, the middle-order batter scored 61 runs off 95 deliveries with five fours to his name and most importantly, stitched a crucial partnership of 111 runs for the fourth wicket with his skipper Karunaratne. It was Dhananjaya’s counter-attack that had given the momentum after West Indies threatened to run away with quick wickets in the third session of the opening day.