Ace cricketer Lasith Malinga will retire from One Day International cricket after the first game of the three-match ODI series against Bangladesh. Dimuth Karunaratne, captain of Sri Lanka cricket team announced the news at the team’s press conference on July 23.
Lasith Malinga was named in Sri Lanka’s 22-member squad for the three ODIs against Bangladesh starting on 26 July. Karunaratne came to address the press regarding the same and said, “He (Malinga) is going to play the first match. After that he is retiring. That’s what he said to me. I don’t know what he said [to] the selectors but [to] me he said he is playing only one match.”
Nothing has officially come yet from the board or Malinga yet but the man himself has reportedly broken the news to his skipper. One of the leading bowlers of the game is Sri Lanka’s third-highest wicket-taker in ODIs with 335 wickets from 225 matches behind Chaminda Vaas (399) and Muttiah Muralitharan (523). He is at the 10th position on the overall list for the highest wicket-takers in ODIs.
Malinga, although retired from Test in 2011 is a continuous contributor to the limited over the format of the game. He already announced his retirement from T20 as well after the Twenty20 World Cup in Australia in 2020. Malinga in the recently concluded World Cup 2019 took 13 wickets from only seven matches to become the highest wicket-taker in World Cup 2019 for Sri Lanka. His 4/43 against England kept the dreams of the knock-out stage alive for his team. He’s the only bowler to have three ODI hat-tricks and two of those came in World Cups. He has that lethal talent of handling the new ball and delivering at the death with equal perfection. This is what makes him one of the best of the game.
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