Spinner Anushka going great guns

Chris DHAMBARAGE

Last year he made a stunning impact capturing 85 wickets while representing the First Eleven team for the first time. Nineteen year old Anushka Dimantha Samaratunga is now well set to improve on that performance having already made his presence felt in the current inter school cricket season.

The dynamic left arm spinner from Isipatana College has made vast strides and has picked up a total of 65 wickets from only nine outings. This is a tremendous achievement and he could easily top the one hundred wicket mark with the entire first term matches left for this year.

His latest heroics came during the fixture against Mahanama MV last week where he bowled his side to an innings victory with a matchbag of 15 wickets at the Air Force grounds in Rifle Green.

Not only that Samaratunga also came closer of creating history as he returned astonishing figures of nine wickets for 22 in the second innings of the match. This was of course not the first time that he had got closer of claiming all ten wickets in an innings.

Samaratunga had outstanding figures of eight wickets for 36 in the match against Joseph Vaz College Wennappuwa and followed up with another five wicket haul in the second innings. In addition he claimed another eight wicket haul in the match against S. Thomas’ College Mount Lavinia.

He has altogether captured five wickets in an innings on seven occasions which is a good sign and that also proves his consistency and the amount of accuracy which he has maintained throughout his career. Even then it was after he came into the First eleven team that he really began to make headlines having completed his junior cricket career at Isipatana College in a pretty ordinary manner. He did produce some occasional brilliance while capturing five wickets against Lumbini MV in an under 15 game and also took four wickets against Zahira College for the under 17 team.

But he never really threatened to cause serious danger to the opposition and was considered just another left arm spinner in the bowling line-up.

However the situation completely changed once he came into the First Eleven side where he came under the guidance and supervision of Coach Suranga Wijenayake.

The former Cambrian, Bloomfield, Sri Lanka under 19 and Sri Lanka ‘A’ team player was able to soon identify the talent and potential of this youngster as they began to work out on a strategy that would lay the foundation for a successful career. Wijenayake himself a left arm spinner during his days took special attention on this bowler and has been able to fine tune his technique and rhythm to a great extent. The results have come almost immediately and Anushka Samaratunga could easily be considered as the finest exponent of this art in the school scene this season.

Wijenayake believes that with this kind of high arm action and with his wicket to wicket style of bowling Samaratunga could be compared to the likes of former Sri Lanka left arm spinner Don Anurasiri who was also quite affective during his days capturing 418 first class wickets at an average of 19.88.

But the advantage that Samaratunga carry with him is that he could also turn the ball and vary his crease so that there will be a much greater impact at the time of delivery.

Discussion with Dr. Thurairaja

With the dawn of the New Year 2010 ITN have made arrangements to telecast one hour discussion program on sports every Friday commencing today with their Prime TV’s ‘Round Table’ at 10.00 p.m.

Premasara Epasinghe will conduct today’s inaugural discussion with Triple International in Sports Dr. C. Thurairaja.