Sri Lankan fast bowler Lasith Malinga, who on Wednesday played an important role in Mumbai Indians' (MI) 37-run Victory over Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in an Indian Premier League (IPL) clash at Mumbai, went on to pick 7 wickets in a domestic 50-over match in Sri Lanka on Thursday. Inside 12 hours, the Sri Lankan Veteran has played two matches.
The 35-year old cricketer's workload will be closely monitored by the team management, given that he will be most likely leading Sri Lanka in the Cricket World Cup.
Malinga took 3/34 for MI against CSK and the match ended close to midnight on Wednesday.
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Early morning on Thursday, Malinga was on a flight from Mumbai to Colombo and from there travelled to Kandy to play Sri Lanka's domestic Super Four tournament, where he recorded career-best List A figures of 7 for 49, representing Galle.
Galle beat Kandy by 156 runs in the match and it was a vintage Malinga performance as the only time he got a bit of rest was when Galle batted first and scored 255.
The sleep-deprived Malinga then rocked the Kandy line-up with figures of 9.5-0-49-7 with the opposition team being led by another current international Dimuth Karunaratne.
Malinga, who is Sri Lanka's ODI captain, had decided to play the provincial ODI tournament despite Sri Lanka Cricket allowing him to be available for IPL for the entire month of April.
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The reason for Malinga playing the tournament is to have a closer look at some of the World Cup hopefuls.
Even though both the matches are domestic in nature, there aren't many available instances where a player has played.
(With agency inputs)
