An aggravation of the hamstring strain that ruled Nuwan Pradeep out of the last two Tests, now sees him leave the Sri Lanka ODI squad. He was one of only two specialist seamers in the squad, but the selectors have replaced him with middle-order batsman Angelo Perera.

Pradeep was seen bowling at good pace in the nets through the back end of the Test series, and was in fact set to play the opening ODI, before aggravating his injury just minutes before the toss on Sunday. That he is in the ODI squad at all is thanks to a spate of injuries to seamers. Pradeep had largely only played Tests until the likes of Lasith Malinga, Dushmantha Chameera and Dhammika Prasad were all ruled out.

Perera makes his way into the side after good outings with Sri Lanka A team in England. He scored 35, 30 not out, 35 and 69 in four list A matches against England Lions and Pakistan A. An aggressive right-hand batsman, Perera has also been one of the more consistent performers in domestic cricket over the past few years, maintaining an average of 36.21 and a strike rate of 93 across 78 List A innings. He hit 450 first-class runs at an average of 40.90 in this year's Premier League Tournament.

The selectors had originally selected Perera as cover for batsmen Dinesh Chandimal and Kusal Mendis who took blows to the ribs and fingers respectively. Both those players have been cleared to play on Wednesday however, and, with seamers unlikely to play a major role for Sri Lanka in this series, no fast-bowling replacement has been made for Pradeep.

(ESPN)