Lakmal was a notable absentee from his country’s initial Test squad after sustaining a grade-two tear to his right hamstring earlier in the tour.
However, while the seamer is certain to miss the opening five-day match at Lord’s that begins on Thursday, Sri Lanka have not ruled out adding Lakmal to their squad at a later date.
Asked about the possibility of Lakmal featuring at Headingley, wicketkeeper-batsman Prasanna Jayawardene said: “If he’s fit, he’ll definitely come in.”
Chanaka Welegedara, Nuwan Pradeep and Dhammika Prasad have formed Sri Lanka’s pace attack this week in a tour match against Northamptonshire.
Saturday’s play was washed out by rain, but the tourists reduced Northants to 146-5 on the previous day after posting 558-8 declared.
“Lakmal is a huge loss but everyone saw yesterday that our pace bowlers did brilliantly on this track,” added Jayawardene.
“We have a good pace attack so we can do much better on this tour.”
Jayawardene was not part of Sri Lanka’s squad for the recent one-day series with England, but takes heart from his team’s 3-2 victory in that rubber.
“I think we have a good chance this time, because we had a good one-day series and morale is high,” he explained.
“All the boys did well – fielding, batting, bowling. So we are going for the Test series, 100 per cent.
“It’s not easy coming from the subcontinent, we have to adapt to the conditions very early, adjust our technique when batting and bowling in these conditions.
“After the one-day series loss, they (England) are coming hard, we’re expecting that.”
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