Informed selectors about my intention to resign from captaincy: Karunaratne

Sri Lanka have heralded a new dawn after years of mediocrity under Dimuth Karunaratne and even though results are hard to come by, they have shown definitive progress. Till the last couple of weeks, Sri Lanka were in contention to make it to the World Test Championship final.

But Dimuth Karunaratne has made it clear that he doesn’t want to steer the ship anymore and has already informed the management about his decision of resigning from Test captaincy following the conclusion of the Ireland Test series next month.

"I've talked with the selectors about stepping down as captain after the Ireland series. In the next WTC cycle, you've got to do two years," Karunaratne said. "I think it's best if a new captain does that whole cycle than for me to do half and hand over. I've talked to the selectors about this, but I haven't got a response yet. My preference is to hand over to a new leader after the next series."

Despite taking over the captaincy duties in a turbulent period, when Sri Lanka were changing captains almost on a monthly basis, Karunaratne added stability to the set-up. Under him, Sri Lanka registered 10 wins, 10 losses, and six draws - one of the most successful Sri Lankan captains to have secured that results.

Karunaratne had a long injury layoff and played some grade cricket in Australia before making a comeback to the Sri Lankan set-up to lead the side for the New Zealand series. Sri Lanka lost the two-match series 2-0 but the skipper managed three fifties in four innings to prove that he still has it in him to dominate Test cricket.

"I played Tests after eight months. I only got to play one innings in a four-day match in between," Karunaratne said. "I'm someone who gets a big one after getting a start, so I think I don't have that patience at the moment, and I need to go back to domestic cricket and develop that again.

"After eight months, although I made some runs here, I could have done more, I think. Twice, I think I could have turned half-centuries into hundreds, and I wasted them."