Pramodya Wickramasinghe - Sri Lanka - Batsman

Pramodya Wickramasinghe is a reliable medium pace bowler who served Sri Lanka well during the early part of the 90's. He relied on movement in the air and was accurate in his line and length.

He started playing first class cricket for the Sinhalese Sport Club in 1988. He rose to prominence by performing consistently in the Youth Asia Cup championships that were held in Bangladesh in 1989. This led to a call-up to the Sri Lankan B team to tour England in 1991. His finest moment though came in a club match against Kalutara when he created history by picking up all ten wickets in one innings. He finished up with 10/41 and Sri Lanka had unearthed a potential star.

He made his Test debut against Pakistan in 1991 and he immediately impressed in the second Test at Faisalabad when he picked up 5/73 to give Sri Lanka an outside chance of victory. However, Pakistan held their nerve to win by three wickets. His performances continued to be rather erratic afterwards.

He was a member of Sri Lanka's historic World Cup winning campaign in 1996. In a career spanning 10 years, he played 40 Tests and picked up 85 wickets at an average of 41.87. In ODIs, he played 134 matches and picked up 109 wickets at an average of 39.64. Despite the ordinary average, it was his economy rate (4.53 rpo) that was the stand out feature of his bowling.

Wickramasinghe was forced to undergo surgery on his shoulder in 2000. He made a comeback and played in the Natwest Tri-series in 2002 featuring India and England but he struggled. Since then, he has failed to come back into the national team and has slowly drifted away.

He later plunged himself into the administrative aspects of the game. He was also a part of the seven member selection panel headed by Asantha de Mel.

By Siddharth Vishwanathan and Deivarayan Muthu