The Sri Lanka Cricket Selection Committee has named a 15-member squad for the two-match Test series in Pakistan, with Kusal Mendis as captain. The series opens on 9 November in Rawalpindi and forms part of the ICC World Test Championship 2025–2027 cycle, according to Sri Lanka Cricket’s media release of 13 October and the Daily Mirror.
The squad
- Pathum Nissanka
- Pasindu Sooriyabandara
- Dinesh Chandimal
- Kamindu Mendis
- Sonal Dinusha
- Kusal Mendis — captain
- Dhananjaya de Silva
- Anjala Bandara
- Keshara Nuwantha
- Prabath Jayasuriya
- Milan Rathnayaka
- Lahiru Kumara
- Asitha Fernando
- Dilshan Madushanka
- Eshan Malinga
Sri Lanka Cricket attached a note to editors stating that Pathum Nissanka will travel with the team only if he is declared medically fit.
Nissanka’s fitness is now a condition on a third consecutive squad
That caveat is not new, and the sequence is worth setting out. Nissanka was left out of the T20I squad named on 2 October, having been reported doubtful with a hamstring problem in late September. He was then named in the 16-member ODI tri-series squad on 4 October in wording the board has now repeated verbatim — travelling only if declared medically fit.
He has therefore gone from omitted, to conditionally selected, to conditionally selected again, across three squads in eleven days, without any filing reporting that he has been passed fit. Neither the release nor the Daily Mirror gives the nature of the problem or a date for an assessment.
The captaincy question the record left open is settled
This squad confirms a succession that this desk had twice recorded as unconfirmed.
When Dhananjaya de Silva resigned the Test captaincy on 8 October, no successor had been named in any newsroom filing, and our report of 6 October — which carried cricket sources saying Mendis would take the job — was explicit that the Mendis half remained unconfirmed.
Sri Lanka Cricket had in fact announced it that same day. The board’s own media release is dated 8 October and says the Selection Committee took the decision at a meeting at SLC headquarters, with the Pakistan series his first assignment as Test captain. It records that Mendis has played 75 Tests and 343 international matches across the three formats.
The timing explains how it was missed rather than excusing it. NewsFirst carried the resignation at 3:04 p.m. Colombo time; the appointment release was published roughly an hour and a quarter later. The newsroom reports of the resignation were accurate when filed and were simply overtaken the same afternoon.
Mendis was given the ODI and T20I captaincy in May, in a split-captaincy arrangement under which de Silva kept the Test side. That split is now closed: he leads in all three formats.
De Silva is retained as a player
De Silva appears at number seven. When he resigned he said he would continue to represent Sri Lanka in Test cricket and remained available for selection, and Sri Lanka Cricket said it welcomed that. His selection is the first confirmation that the board has acted on it.
The handover is not mid-series after all
Our 6 October report flagged that a captaincy decision taken days into a tour would be “an unusually compressed piece of timing.” The schedule softens that. The T20I leg finished on 13 October in Rawalpindi, and the Tests do not begin until 9 November — close to four weeks later, with the ODI tri-series in between. Mendis takes the Test side into a series that starts well after the change, not during one.
How the Test squad differs from the white-ball group
Six of the 15 were also in the ODI tri-series squad: Nissanka, Kusal Mendis, Kamindu Mendis, Asitha Fernando, Dilshan Madushanka and Eshan Malinga. The other nine are selected for the red-ball leg alone.
One name invites confusion: Milan Rathnayaka is in this Test squad, while Pavan Rathnayake was in the ODI squad. They are different players.
Sourcing
Sri Lanka Cricket’s own releases are the primary documents here and are cited directly, though srilankacricket.lk is not one of the newsrooms counted toward this article’s credibility rating. Among verified newsrooms only the Daily Mirror had filed at the time of writing; its report reproduces the release and every name matches. Ada Derana also carried the squad under the headline “Sri Lanka names 15-member Test squad for Pakistan series”, and its article identifier places it on 13 October, but the site has been returning a CloudFront block for more than three weeks and the report could not be read, so it is not cited. NewsFirst’s sports page still had the 8 October resignation as its newest cricket item, and no ESPNcricinfo squad page carried the names.
The hero image is the media release itself, which independently confirms the date, all 15 names, Mendis’s designation as captain and the Nissanka fitness note.
Not reported
Neither the release nor the Daily Mirror names a vice-captain, gives any player’s role or batting position, or says whether any member of the squad is in line for a debut — claims about individual debutants circulated in search results but appear in no filing this desk could fetch, and two searches returned contradictory descriptions of the same player, so none are repeated here. Nothing is said about the second Test’s venue or dates, the squad’s departure date, or whether de Silva will have any formal leadership role. No reason is given for naming the Test squad four weeks before the series, and neither Mendis nor de Silva has commented on the selection.
Sources: Sri Lanka Test Squad for Pakistan Tour 2026 — Sri Lanka Cricket, 13 October; Kusal Mendis Appointed Test Captain — Sri Lanka Cricket, 8 October; Kusal Mendis to lead Sri Lanka’s squad for Pakistan Test series — Daily Mirror, 13 October.
