By Dhammika Ratnaweera
One of Sri Lanka’s humblest of cricketers Nuwan Kulasekera, who represented his country over two years ago for his last time, decided to call it a day for his international career as the ageing paceman decided that he had little chance to get back to the national cricket team, which is now focusing on a fresh composition towards the next cricket world cup.
“As much as the cricketer wanted, his fans and every other cricket-loving public demanded, I too would have liked to see him play in a match to make his last before the retirement, but unfortunately, I have to understand the position of Sri Lanka Cricket, who had to take a tough decision on this delicate situation” said Sri Lanka’s sports minister Harin Fernando defending that every national association has to work on policies that would avoid conflicts.
Accordingly, Sri Lanka Cricket had decided to call Nuwan Kulasekere to offer an official send-off to the retired cricketer after Sri Lanka v Bangladesh match on July 31.
The right-arm paceman Nuwan Kulasekera, who was Sri Lanka’s only number one ranked bowler in the world when he topped the ICC rankings in 2009, announced his retirement two days after his 37th birthday on last Thursday. The retiring paceman said that it would have been nice to have played his last match along with Lasith Malinga who retired the day after, but said he had no regrets on his cricketing career that had offered him so much of joy and success in life. ‘I represented my team and nation with the highest amount of pride and admiration, nothing is more important to me than seeing Sri Lanka at the top of world cricket. I have no regrets, every day that I played cricket I was happy, and I leave the sport happily.” said the outgoing Kukasekara.
He took career-best ODI figures of 5 for 22 against Australia in Brisbane. Kulasekara, though, wasn’t as effective in Tests and ended with 48 wickets in 21 games, the last of which came in 2014 at Lord’s, where Sri Lanka clung on for a thrilling draw. “I had the privilege of representing Sri Lanka in every major ICC event between 2007-2014, where the team played in two 50-over World Cup finals, three T20 World Cup finals, including our victorious one in 2014 against India. I was honoured to be the vice-captain of this World Cup-winning team,” recalled Kulasekera.
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