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In the 21st century, cricket in Sri Lanka has been synonymous with big names like Muttiah Muralitharan, Chaminda Vaas, Mahela Jayawardene, and Kumar Sangakkara, among others. These legends left a lasting impact on cricket in the island nation while making success seem like a foregone conclusion for the ardent fans of Sri Lanka.
But, after they retired from internationals one after another, with Kumar Sangakkara being the last to move on from the sport in 2015, a huge void engulfed the Sri Lanka cricket team. With that, the success suddenly dried up, and Sri Lanka as a cricketing nation looked like a pale shadow of its former self.
The nadir for Sri Lanka cricket occurred in the summer of 2017 at home, when the neighbours India beat them comprehensively in all formats of the game. They were whitewashed in the Test series by 3-0, ODI series by 5-0, and T20I series by 1-0.
In the same year, Sri Lanka lost 12 ODIs in a row to Zimbabwe, India, and Pakistan, their form in T20Is wasn’t any good, losing eight in a row in 2017 too. Around this tough phase, the appointment of Chandika Hathurusingha as the coach of the national team was seen as a step in the right direction, but his strategy of introducing new players into the system had mostly poor results in 2018 in all formats.
Sri Lanka whitewash South Africa in away Test series; beat England in ICC Cricket World Cup in 2019
The first big success under the coaching of Chandika Hathurusingha came for Sri Lanka in February of 2019, when they became the first team to defeat South Africa in a Test series away from Asia. They whitewashed the Proteas by 2-0, after a famous innings of 153* from Kusal Perera, who single-handedly pushed his team over the line in a run chase in excess of 300 runs in Durban, in the first Test match.
In the summer of 2019, Sri Lanka pulled off a major win against England in the round-robin match of the ICC Cricket World Cup by 20 runs in Leeds, before the hosts won the tournament. They finished in sixth place on the points table of the quadrennial spectacle, ahead of the highly fancied South Africa, before taking their limited-overs form to Pakistan to whitewash them by 3-0 in the T20I series in October of 2019.
