Lasith Malinga
Lasith Malinga - the record holder for the number of hat-tricks
Lasith Malinga is an outstanding cricketer in the position of a bowler who has regularly set records in domestic and international cricket competitions. He is known for a rather aggressive style of play, which, however, allows him to achieve high results.
Lasith Malinga: how the professional career began
Lasith Malinga was born on August 28, 1983, in the village of Rathgama in Sri Lanka. From early childhood, like all the kids in the yard, Lasith was obsessed with cricket. The guy entered Vidyaloka College in Galle in 1993, where he received secondary education.
One day, a former professional cricketer Champak Ramanayake was walking around the city and saw the local guys playing. At the same moment, he immediately noticed the young Lasith Malinga. Ramanayake was impressed by the guy’s skills and invited him to play for the Galle Cricket Club. So Lasith made his debut for Galle Cricket Club at 17.
Lasith Malinga made his debut in Test One in 2004 successfully: the player took six wickets, pleasantly surprising not only his team but also his opponent from Australia. During the same period, Lasith played a match for the first time at the ODI Asia Cup. After a successful start again, the athlete was made a permanent bowler in the ODI team.
Lasith Malinga: professional successes
Lasith Malinga began to lose form in 2011 and decided to leave Test cricket to focus more on ODI and T20I. By the way, the Sri Lanka Cricket Board didn’t like it very much. Malinga was accused of allegedly not caring about the nation and was guided only by the desire to earn more money. Whether this is true or not, of course, we will not know.
Lasith Malinga became the vice-captain of the Sri Lanka national squad in 2012 and was announced as the captain of the ICC World Twenty20 team two years later in 2014.
The period 2015-2016 was the most unsuccessful in Malinga’s career. Due to constant injuries, he had to miss all national and international tournaments for a whole year.
List of professional successes of Lasith Malinga:
- Captained Sri Lanka when they won the T20 World Cup in 2014.
- According to some sources, Lasith is the only bowler who has scored a double hat-trick for 4 balls at international championships.
- He is also the bowler who scored three hat-tricks in an ODI.
- Lasith Malinga was the official ambassador of the T20 World Cup.
- Won two best Player of the match titles in ODI.
- Won six titles of the best player in the IPL matches.
- Won two best Player titles in World Cup matches.
- Played for teams: Mumbai Indians, Ruhana Royals, Melbourne Stars, Middlesex, Guyana Amazon Warriors, Ruhana Reds, Montreal Tigers, and Tallawahs.
Lasith Malinga retired from ODI in 2019.
Lasith Malinga: top exciting facts about a cricketer
Intriguing facts about Lasith Malinga:
- The full name of Lasith Malinga is Separamadu Lasith Malinga. He also has several nicknames in the cricket community: Malinga the Slinga, Yorker King and Rathgama Express. All of them were invented because of the player’s characteristic bowling style.
- The athlete’s religion is Buddhism.
- According to Malinga, he developed his technique of swinging the ball by playing cricket with a tennis ball.
- He is very superstitious, so before he throws the ball, he kisses him.
- Lasith Malinga has two tattoos on his body: one denotes the date of his first match in the Test series, and the second is the date when he took four wickets for four balls.
