*Courtesy – The Island
Emulating the feats of Arjuna Ranatunga or filling his big boots is quite daunting for a cricketer but Thisara Perera has managed to achieve his dream. He was only seven years old when Sri Lanka won the ICC Cricket World Cup in 1996 and since that day, growing up playing the game, Thisara only dreamed of doing one thing – an encore of Arjuna.
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“It was some sight to see Arjuna hitting the winning boundary to help us win the World Cup. All I wanted to do when I was grown-up was to score the winning runs in a boundary in a World Cup final. That was my dream,” Thisara Perera said in a live interaction with Papare.com.
The burly all-rounder’s chance would come in the 2014 World T-20 final in Mirpur. Sri Lanka had lost four World Cup finals before that – 50 over World Cup finals in 2007 and 2011 and 20 over World Cup finals in 2009 and 2012. In this high-pressure game against India, Thisara wanted to change history.
Kumar Sangakkara had laid the platform with a match-winning half-century and Thisara had joined him with still 52 runs required for the victory. The game was on the balance when he walked into bat and Thisara posted 23 off 14 balls with three sixes to turn the tide in Sri Lanka’s favour.
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“Kumar is so brilliant to bat with. His instructions when I came out were clear. Hit the ball if it is in your zone and that’s what I did.”
“The winning six, well what can I say. That is what I had always dreamed of. To score the winning runs with a boundary in a World Cup final and here I was at the big stage. R. Ashwin is a crafty customer and he bowled it wide and I could have got stumped. But I managed to get enough wood into the shot and it cleared the boundary and I was over the moon. I had achieved my dream,” Thisara went onto say.
Thisara had a brief stint as Sri Lanka’s captain, most notably when Sri Lanka toured Pakistan in October 2017. He spoke of how the players were made to feel like heads of state during the visit as security was so sight.
He also elaborated on how he started off his cricket at school as an opener and towards the tail end of college life, his coach Harsha De Silva wanted him to go down to the middle order to balance the side. With his ability to clear the boundary with ease, Thisara could turn out to be deadly as an opener when fielding restrictions are on. He says he will fit into whatever the requirements of the team. Maybe that is one area that Mickey Arthur can think of once the lockdown ends and international cricket resumes.
