Sri Lanka practice on granite surfaces for upcoming South Africa tour

The Sri Lankan team has received a massive confidence booster ahead of their South African tour where they will feature in three Test matches, five ODIs, and three T20Is.

Captain Angelo Mathews, who had a leg injury and Dinesh Chandimal who suffered a broken hand have both recovered and will get back into the squad, providing a much-needed energy to the batting unit.

"Except for one or two changes, they (South Africa) are pretty much a settled team for the past four-five years," Mathews was quoted by Cricbuzz on Saturday. "They have been going with the same sort of players, maximum 20. They have managed a set combination and now the results are showing. The settled combination is the one that has led to their success today.”

"We are now doing the same, we talked about it a lot. The solution is not to chop and change but be patient with the players," said Mathews.

But to win against South Africa in their own backyard both the batting and the bowling needs to fire in tandem, a thing which is presently missing from the Sri Lankan Test side. While the bowlers have been quite good it is their batting which has let them down often.

Thus, before flying off to South Africa, Mathews stressed on the fact that their batsmen need to contribute handsomely to give the bowlers a fair chance.

"With Dushmantha Chameera coming back into the team and young Vikum Sanjaya earning his spot, we have got a fairly decent pace attack which can put them under pressure, but we need to score runs as a batting unit," the skipper said. "It's going to be our main challenge; the boys have worked extremely hard in the past few weeks."

As part of preparations for the tour, the team made some innovations and batted on granite surfaces in order to cope with the extra bounce and pace which might lie ahead for them in the upcoming series.

"We used a lot of granite stuff, especially the batters. When you use a piece of granite, the ball is coming on to you quicker. The granite is laid down on the pitch and you can throw the ball on it so that it comes on quicker,” he said.

"We've done everything possible to try and counterattack the South African fast bowlers and get used to their conditions. We have about 12 days before we play our first Test on Boxing Day. We'll try and use those days to the maximum so that we get things right."