Sri Lankan milestones across T-20 World Cups

Rex Clementine

There have been eight T-20 World Cups so far and West Indies and England have won the crown two times each while Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and Australia have tasted success once each. Sri Lanka have an enviable record in the biannual event having won the title in 2014 and reached two other finals in 2009 and 2012 apart from finishing as losing semi-finalists in 2010.

Across the eight tournaments, Sri Lanka have played 51 games and won 31. That is a winning percentage of 60 and only Australia with 62 and India with 61 have better winning percentages than Sri Lanka.

There have been a few hiccups in recent years with Sri Lanka forced to play qualifying round tournaments prior to the main competition due to their low rankings, but even when that happened in 2021 and 2022, they did well to challenge bigger teams. If not for injuries and sloppy fielding, even on those two instances the team could have given a good run for the opponents.

Mahela Jayawardene and Virat Kohli are the only players to have scored over 1000 runs in T-20 World Cups. Several others like Rohit Sharma (963), David Warner (806) and Jos Buttler (799) could reach the milestone in this competition starting in a week’s time.

Sri Lanka’s total of 260 for six against Kenya in the inaugural edition of the competition in Johannesburg is still the highest score in the tournament. Their victory margin of 172 runs in the same game is also the biggest margin of victory.

Ajantha Mendis took six wickets for eight runs against Zimbabwe in 2012 at Suriyawewa and that’s still the best bowling figures in T-20 World Cups. Closely followed is Rangana Herath, who claimed five for three runs against New Zealand in what was a virtual quarter-final in Chittagong in 2014.

Wanindu Hasaranga took 16 wickets in the 2021 tournament in UAE and that’s the record for the most wickets in a single tournament. Hasaranga broke the record of Ajantha Mendis, who finished with 15 wickets in the 2012 competition. But the current selector had played two games less than the present captain. Hasaranga also had 15 wickets to his name in 2022 in Australia.

For the last two T-20 World Cups, Sri Lanka backed youth and heading into this tournament, most of those players who took part in the previous two editions have gained experience. There’s lot of hope lead up to this competition that Sri Lanka will make an impact and reach the semis.