Can Dimuth emulate Sanga and Aravinda?

by Rex Clementine

One reason why Sri Lanka’s Test cricket has not deteriorated as fast as the two white ball formats is their captain Dimuth Karunaratne. With consistent performances and match winning knocks, Dimuth has rescued his team time and again. Despite playing less than a handful of Test matches in 2021, he finished the year as world’s third highest run getter and this year he has been even better having emerged as number six ranked batsman in the world. His efforts have been recognized with Yorkshire offering him a contract. He thus becomes the first Sri Lankan to play for Leeds, where traditions are strictly adhered to than Lord’s.

Yorkshire was the last county to include overseas players. Sachin Tendulkar broke that barrier in 1993. Yorkshire is like the Manchester United of football having won more Championships than any other county. They have got 32 County Championships plus a shared title in 1949.

Many are the Sri Lankans who have played County Cricket. But just two of them have featured in Championship winning teams. Dr. Churchill Gunasekara, the first Sri Lankan to play County Cricket, was part of the Middlesex side that won the double in 1920 and 1921 while Farveez Maharoof 91 years later was part of the Lancashire side that won in 2011.

Every Sri Lankan cricketer has benefited by playing County Cricket. Aravinda de Silva was the first to be drafted in by a County after the country gained Test status. He played for Kent and finished with 1781 runs in 16 games. He averaged 59 with seven hundreds including two double hundreds, His much cherished moment with Kent came in a one-day game when he made a hundred in the Benson and Hedges final at Lord’s against a Lancashire attack spearheaded by Wasim Akram. His efforts opened doors for many other Sri Lankans.

Kumar Sangakkara represented three Counties. He started with Warwickshire, had a stint with Durham and finished with Surrey, whom he represented for three seasons. His last season in south London in 2017 was stunning. Sanga topped the batting charts finishing with 1491 runs in 16 innings at an average of 106 and eight hundreds. That included a record five successive centuries.

County Cricket brings a best out of a player. You are the overseas professional and you are expected to be the key player of the side. Aravinda did it having gone as the replacement for Carl Hooper and so did Sanga having gone to Birmingham in 2007. Both returned as better players when they put on Sri Lanka colours.

In his very first Test match after the Kent stint, Aravinda made a match winning hundred in Faisalabad and Sri Lanka went onto win the series.

Immediately after Warwickshire, Sanga in his next two Tests hit 52, 192, 92 and 152. He was unstoppable.

Aravinda averaged 37 in Tests before Kent and 45 after. Of his 20 Test hundreds, 13 came after County Cricket. We all know that Sanga averaged 57 in Tests. After Warwickshire he in fact averaged 60 in Tests and 24 of his 38 Test hundreds were scored after that.

Dimuth averages 39 in Test cricket as of now. Expect that to go up once he returns from England. There’s hardly a professional atmosphere in our domestic cricket. Players learn what it means to be a professional player by being involved in an atmosphere like in England.

Dimuth came close to signing up a County contract on a few occasions but national commitment or injury saw him missing out. He’s finally got a break with Yorkshire. Better late than never.

North England is not the kind of place you want to live in April and May. It will be bitterly cold with temperature barely touching double digits. At nights, it goes minus. This transition will make a good Test cricketer a great one.