The Sri Lanka men's national cricket team, nicknamed The Lions, represents Sri Lanka in men's international cricket. It is a full Member of the International Cricket Council (ICC) with Test, One-Day International (ODI) and T20 International (T20I) status. The team first played first class cricket in 1926–27 and became an associate member of the ICC in 1965. They made their international debut in the 1975 Cricket World Cup and were later awarded the Test status in 1981, which made Sri Lanka the eighth Test cricket-playing nation. The team is administered by Sri Lanka Cricket.
Denagamage Praboth Mahela de Silva Jayawardene is a Sri Lankan former professional cricketer and captain of the Sri Lankan national cricket team. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen from Sri Lankan cricket.
The World Cricket Tsunami Appeal was an effort by the International Cricket Council to raise funds to support the humanitarian relief efforts following the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004. It was scheduled to be held over two games but was reduced to one due to an over-crowded international playing schedule and concerns for players' health playing in the April heat in Kolkata. The match was played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 10 January 2005.
The Afro-Asia Cup was a cricket competition played for the first time in 2005 and which is intended to run for at least three years. The idea was to raise money for the Asian Cricket Council and the African Cricket Association, and the whole venture was given a massive boost when the ICC, somewhat controversially, agreed to give the series of one-day matches full ODI status.
The Bangladeshi cricket team toured Sri Lanka for three One Day International cricket matches and two Test cricket matches in August and September 2005. The Bangladeshi team was coming off a moderately successful tour of England, as they had pushed Australia close in one ODI and beat them in another. However, they had still lost five out of six matches in the NatWest Series, both of the Test matches, and remained at the bottom of both the ICC Test Championship and ICC ODI Championship. The hosts Sri Lanka, meanwhile, were undefeated in home ODI tournaments since February 2004, and in home Test series since March 2004, both against top-ranked Australia. Their win in the Indian Oil Cup a month before this series saw them into second place in the ODI Championship, but they are only ranked sixth in Tests.
The Sri Lankan cricket team toured New Zealand for cricket matches during the 2005–06 season. Sri Lanka were scheduled to play five one-day international games and three Test matches in the 2004–05 season, beginning their tour on 26 December 2004, but due to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake which hit the island of Sri Lanka hard, the Sri Lankan team travelled home after the first of the One Day Internationals. The Test matches were rescheduled to April, and the remaining four ODIs were played between 31 December 2005 and 8 January 2006.
Sri Lanka toured England for cricket matches during the 2006 international cricket season. England were back home for the first time since September 2005 and looked to maintain their Test standards, which saw them keep their second place in the ICC Test Championship in India, and the teams were also competing for sixth place in the ICC ODI Championship as both England and Sri Lanka were coming off the back of two lost ODI tours on the Asian sub-continent, against India and Pakistan respectively. To add to problems, both teams were likely to be missing some key members of the team as England were without some of their squad for their previous tour and, two days before Sri Lanka departed for England, it was revealed that skipper Marvan Atapattu would stay at home for the tour due to back problems that had forced him to skip his previous tour too. Jehan Mubarak was brought in as his replacement.
The South Africa national cricket team toured Sri Lanka for cricket matches in the 2006 cricket season. South Africa are scheduled to play two Test matches against Sri Lanka, one warm-up first class game over three days against Sri Lanka A, and at least four One Day Internationals as part of a triangular series. Sri Lanka took the Test series 2–0 after winning the final Test by one wicket, their second successive home Test series win against South Africa after their win in 2004.
City Oval, is a multi-purpose stadium in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. The 12,000 capacity stadium is currently used predominantly for cricket matches, with the ground being used by KwaZulu-Natal Inland men's and women's teams, KwaZulu-Natal and Dolphins, and hosted two matches during the 2003 Cricket World Cup. It is one of only three first-class cricket grounds in the world to have a tree within the boundary ropes (the others being St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury, United Kingdom and VRA Cricket Ground in Amstelveen, Netherlands), and any cricketer that scores a century or takes a five-wicket haul in a match at the City Oval gets to plant a tree at the ground. The City Oval Pavilion is based on the design of Queen's Park cricket ground in Chesterfield, United Kingdom.
The Sri Lankan cricket team toured New Zealand for cricket matches during the 2006–07 cricket season. It was the third successive season Sri Lanka visited New Zealand, after the 2005–06 tour was aborted and reschuled for the winter of 2005–06. Originally, the tour had been set to include three Tests and five One Day Internationals, but New Zealand Cricket chief executive Martin Snedden announced in June that one of the Tests would be replaced with two Twenty20 Internationals.
The following is a list of important cricket related events which occurred in the year 2007.
The second Afro-Asia Cup was played from 6 June until 10 June 2007, hosted by India. The three ODI and one Twenty20 matches were broadcast live on ESPN, after Nimbus had pulled out from the deal with Asian Cricket Council. The Twenty20 match did not have official status as a Twenty20 international or a regular Twenty20 match.
The Bangladesh cricket team toured Sri Lanka for three Test matches and three One Day Internationals in June and July 2007. This series held Mohammad Ashraful's first Test and ODI matches as captain of Bangladesh. Sri Lanka ended up winning all the Test matches and One-day Internationals.
The England cricket team toured Sri Lanka from 28 September to 22 December 2007. England made two trips to Sri Lanka in this tour with the ODI team arriving on 25 September before returning to England on 15 October. The Test team arrived on 15 November and stayed there for the remainder of the tour. The tour included three Test matches and five ODIs.
The 2008–09 international cricket season was between September 2008 and March 2009. The season saw the security concerns for cricket in Pakistan reach a pinnacle. The ICC Champions Trophy, scheduled to be held in Pakistan in September 2008, was postponed to 2009 after five of the participating nations refused to send their teams for the event. In November 2008, a Pakistani militant group launched terror attacks in Mumbai. This led to India cancelling their tour of Pakistan originally scheduled for January and February 2009. Sri Lanka agreed to tour Pakistan in place of India. However, the tour was jeopardised by a terror attack in Lahore where gunmen fired at a bus carrying the Sri Lankan team, injuring six team members. The Champions Trophy was later relocated to South Africa. No international cricket were played in Pakistan for more than five years. This period of isolation ended when Zimbabwe toured Pakistan in May 2015. After successfully hosting a few T20Is against World-XI, the Sri Lanka cricket team and the West Indians from 2017 to 2018, a few matches of the Pakistan Super League from 2017 to 2019, the whole season in 2020 as well as hosting complete tours against Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi cricket teams respectively during the 2019–20 season, built a good reputation of Pakistan. Hence, by the end of 2019, the Pakistan Cricket Board, announced that they would no longer play any of their future home matches at a neutral venue, indicating that International Cricket has returned to the country on full-time basis.
The 2002 ICC Champions Trophy was a cricket tournament that was held in Sri Lanka in 2002. It was the third edition of the ICC Champions Trophy – the first two having been known as the ICC Knock Out Tournaments. The tournament was due to be held in India, but was switched to Sri Lanka when an exemption from tax in India was not granted. Fifteen matches were to be played in the tournament including two semi-finals and a final match.[1] All the matches were played in Colombo at two grounds: R. Premadasa Stadium and Sinhalese Sports Club Ground. It was the first time that the teams of all International Cricket Council (ICC) member nations visited Sri Lanka to participate in a cricket tournament.[1]
Pakistan 
Sri Lanka 
India 
