Amal Silva - Sri Lanka - Batsman

An effective wicket-keeper batsman, Amal Silva was a combative keeper batsman apart from being a safe bet with the bat. An injury to his competitor Guy de Alwis opened up an opportunity for young Amal during the 1984 tour of England and due to an emergency, the latter was asked to open the batting. Amal had two centuries in his first three innings as a makeshift opener, including a ton that led Sri Lanka to their first ever Test win. However, all this extra responsibility eventually did more harm than good to him in the long run. After finding success, it was the multiple roles that he did with reasonable efficiency, doubling up as the side’s opener and wicket-keeper bat. He managed to do better in ODIs where the workload wasn’t as much but in Tests, his batting certainly declined and for no fault of his, considering the extreme responsibilities that he had to perform. After those two centuries, Silva never got a 50 in Tests although he managed to do a decent job in the ODI format. Struggles with the bat and not so impressive times behind the sticks saw the axe falling in the 1985-86 season and he barely played after that.

Written by Hariprasad Sadanandan