From 1975 whipping boys to 1996 world champions: Sri Lanka's cricket climb
Sri Lanka's first taste of top-level cricket was a nine-wicket thrashing by the West Indies at the 1975 World Cup. Twenty-one years later, captained by Arjuna Ranatunga, the Lions lifted that same trophy, and their habit of attacking hard in the opening overs helped change how one-day batting was played.
British colonists brought cricket to the island, and The Colombo Journal recorded a match there as early as 1832. A national side, then called Ceylon, existed by the 1880s and was playing first-class cricket in the 1920s. It became an associate member of the ICC in 1965, took the name Sri Lanka in 1972 and made its international debut at the 1975 World Cup in England. A first one-day win came against India at Old Trafford on 16 June 1979.
Full Test status followed in 1981, making Sri Lanka the eighth nation to play the longest format. England won the inaugural Test in Colombo in February 1982 by seven wickets, with Bandula Warnapura leading the home side. Victory arrived in 1985, a 149-run win over India under Duleep Mendis, but another series triumph took more than seven years. The first overseas Test win came at Napier against New Zealand in March 1995.
The 1996 World Cup made the team famous, largely thanks to a blitz in the first 15 overs of each innings. Afterwards they shared the 2002 Champions Trophy with India and won the 2014 T20 World Cup by beating India by six wickets, after finishing runner-up at the 50-over World Cups of 2007 and 2011 and the T20 events of 2009 and 2012. They have also been Asian champions six times, most recently in 2022, and hold the record for the highest team total in Test history.
Test milestones kept coming. Sanath Jayasuriya's side beat Australia for the first time in 1999 at Kandy. In August 2016 Angelo Mathews led a 3–0 whitewash of Australia, the first ever, and in October 2017 Sri Lanka won their first day-night Test, against Pakistan in Dubai, by 68 runs.
Source: Sri Lanka national cricket team
