Rumesh Ratnayake at 50 quite capable of being a cricket coach

by A C DE Silva

Rumesh Joseph Ratnayake – the former Peterite cricketer turned out for Sri Lanka as a right-arm medium-pace bowler and now is a fast bowling coach.

Rumesh went on to play 23 Tests and has been fortunate to bag 73 wickets while in 70 ODI’s had 76 victims, mostly on unresponsive wickets.

Born on January 2nd in 1964, he played for Sri Lanka for the last time in the third Test against Pakistan at Lahore in 1992. He bowled his heart out for Sri Lanka against big names on the cricket front. Though he is now in the good round age of 50 years, he is quite capable of indulging in a coaching stent.

Having played for St.Peter’s College, he then joined NCC on leaving school and he worked tirelessly in inter-club cricket.

Having left school, he came into club cricket with a bang and then came on into International cricket and his first shy was at the New Zealanders in 1983.

After a few matches with the New Zealanders, his first big encounter was against England at Lord’s where he took 5 for 69 which was highly rated performance and that was not all, Rumesh also did well with the bat, matching up a solid 56 to save Sri Lanka from certain defeat.

Then going on tour to Australia, he had 6 for 66 against Australia at Hobart.

Then came Test matches and Sri Lanka’s first ever Test victory and his match bag of 9 wickets in that triumph will live long in the memory of cricket fans.

Rumesh Ratnayake who played for St.Peter’s College during his schooldays wasted no time in getting his foothold on big time cricket as mentioned earlier and one of his best performances came in the 1985-86 series against India, taking 20 wickets in the series. In the second Test he captured 9 wickets in the match which gave Sri Lanka a rare Test win, and an inaugural series victory.

Ratnayake’s other good hauls include 6 for 66 against Australia at Hobart in 1990-91.

Ratnayake is an Australian qualified level 3 coach too.