Dimuth Karunaratne
Dimuth Karunaratne – a talented batsman from Sri Lanka
Dimuth Karunaratne represents the Sri Lanka national cricket team and is its current captain. The athlete is considered a versatile player but mainly occupies the position of the opening batsman. You can find out how Karunaratne’s professional career developed in our article.
Dimuth Karunaratne: how a cricket career developed
Dimuth Karunaratne was born on April 21, 1988, in the capital of Sri Lanka – Colombo. He combines the positions of a left-handed batsman and a right-arm medium bowler, but Dimuth built his professional career as an opening batsman. The athlete began to get interested in cricket from early childhood. Getting an education at the College of St. Joseph, the guy represented the local cricket team there. By the way, such famous players as Angelo Mathews and Chaminda Vaas were graduates of the college. Dimuth Karunaratne achieved high results in his team and was awarded the Maurice Legoc Trophy.
Then Dimuth Karunaratne played in the Sri Lanka national team in the U-19 category. He made his debut for the Sinhalese sports club in 2008. In July 2011, Karunaratne made his first appearance at a One Day International against the England national team.
Due to his impressive performance in ODI, the athlete was invited to the end of the year for Tests on a tour of South Africa, but he did not take part in the matches. Dimuth made his first appearance in Tests in November 2012 against a team from New Zealand. He got this opportunity thanks to Tillakaratne Dilshan’s injury. Dimuth Karunaratne was able to issue the first century two years later, in 2014. The player was able to get the best result in his entire test career in 2015: Dimuth scored 186 runs.
Dimuth Karunaratne was included in the squad for the Twenty20 International for the first time in February 2021.
Professional achievements of Dimuth Karunaratne:
- Is the first representative of Sri Lanka to score 50, 100 and 150 points in day-night test matches.
- Became the third Sri Lankan representative to score 100 in the 50th test. This was in 2018.
- His double century of 244 runs was the 10th highest score in Sri Lanka’s test matches.
- He is the seventh resident of Sri Lanka who scored 1000 tests in one year.
- In 2019, he led the Sri Lanka national cricket team in Tests, thereby becoming the 17th captain in a row. Under his leadership, the Sri Lankan national team was able to become the first Asian team to win a test series in South Africa and took the third position in the overall standings after England and Australia.
- In 2019, he also became the captain of the Sri Lanka national cricket team at the cricket world cup.
The teams Dimuth Karunaratne played for:
- Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka A, Sri Lanka U-19, Dambulla, Basnahira Cricket Dundee, Sinhalese Sports Club, Sri Lanka Board XI.
Dimuth Karunaratne: personal life, scandals, interesting facts
Dimuth Karunaratne is not a scandalous person, but in March 2019, he was arrested by the police for driving under the influence of alcohol, resulting in an accident. One of the participants in the accident was injured. But Karunaratne was very lucky: he managed to negotiate bail, and later the court decided to pay a fine. This incident did not affect the professional career of the athlete.
In April 2015, Dimuth Karunaratne married model and actress Anuradha Kurukulasooriya. Even the President of Sri Lanka, Maithreepala Sirisena, was present at the wedding ceremony.
Interesting facts about Dimuth Karunaratne:
- His full name is Frank Dimuth Madushanka Karunaratne.
- The game nickname is Dimma.
- The player’s salary is approximately 2 million US dollars.
- Collects expensive cars.
About 130 thousand people have subscribed to Dimuth Karunaratne’s Instagram page, which he has under the nickname @dimuthk_123. The athlete regularly shares pictures from his training sessions and shows his beloved Labrador.
