Birthday special: Dimuth Karunaratne – Sri Lanka’s batting pillar

For almost a decade now, this man has been a vital cog of the Sri Lankan batting line up in Test match cricket. For almost a decade, he has lent stability to the side at the top of the order. Dimuth Karunaratne has been the pillar of the Sri Lankan team with the willow.

At a time when Sri Lankan cricket has been trying to get back on its feet after the retirements of legends like Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, Karunaratne has come out as a ray of hope. And, he has the necessary ingredients for a top-flight Test player. He has a solid defence, is proficient on both the offside as well as the leg side, and has accumulated good numbers at a time when Sri Lankan cricket itself has not experienced a lot of success.

Karunaratne has featured in 70 Test matches for the Sri Lankan side and has scored 4748 runs at an average of 36.24. The left-hander has also scored 10 hundreds and 25 fifties with the willow in the whites.

Karunaratne is already the 10^th highest run-scorer for the Sri Lankan side in Test match cricket, and if he scores another 1000 runs (which he surely will as he has a lot of cricket left in him), he will leapfrog 4 Sri Lankan all-time greats and occupy the 6^th place in the all-time list.

Karunaratne’s numbers in a win in the whites are glittering. In the table below, let us take a look at the numbers that the Sri Lankan skipper has generated in a Test win.

The above table elucidates the importance of Karunaratne to the Sri Lankan side. While he averages 36.24 in his Test career, his average goes up to 46.52 in a Test win. Also, 5 out of his 10 Test hundreds have come in a winning cause for Sri Lanka.

Karunaratne is a valuable commodity for Sri Lankan cricket today, especially in the longest format of the game. As Karunaratne turns 33 today, here is wishing him a very happy birthday.