Milinda Siriwardana

Tisse Appuhamilage Milinda Siriwardana, better known as Milinda Siriwardana is a professional Sri Lankan cricketer. He is a left-hand batsman and an orthodox spinner who has been touted as a powerful all-rounder since his childhood. 

Having made his first-class debut back in 2005, Siriwardana took a decade to break into the national side, after several years of impressive domestic seasons. He debuted against Pakistan at home and announced himself by scoring a quickfire 52* off 26 balls against Pakistan in an ODI while batting as a finisher. 

Later that year, the all-rounder made his Test and T20I debut. However, he could never seal his spot for the longest format. The Nagoda-born remained on the fringes in the white-ball sides but got dropped in 2017, after a series of failures in both ODIs and T20Is and more importantly, after a mediocre 2016 World T20 - where the defending champions ended the group stages as bottom-liners. 

However, he was a part of the 30-member provisional squad for the 2009 ICC World T20 in England but was denied a spot in the final 15-member squad. The all-rounder took six years after that to make it into the Sri Lankan team. 

Surprisingly, Siriwardana was also part of the national squad for the World Cup in 2019, despite being out of the team for nearly two years. ICC themselves mocked the cricketer as they named the Lankan - one of the five surprise picks for the tournament.

The all-rounder played just a solitary match during the pinnacle tournament, that too against the defending champions, Australia at Oval. Siriwardana failed both with bat and ball in that outing and didn’t get another chance in the World Cup. 

After the competition, he couldn’t find his name in the 22-member ODI squad against Bangladesh. In the hard transition times, Siriwardana would look to make a comeback and then cement himself to help Sri Lankan Cricket in the upcoming ICC events. 

(As of August 2021)