Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Full name | Antony Ralph Marinon Opatha | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Born | Colombo, Ceylon | 5 August 1947||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Died | 11 September 2020 73) Colombo, Sri Lanka | (aged||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Batting | Right-handed | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bowling | Right-arm medium | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Role | Bowler | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
International information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
National side |
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ODI debut(cap 6) | 7 June 1975 v West Indies | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Last ODI | 16 June 1979 v India | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Career statistics | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Source: ESPNcricinfo, 24 December 2014 |
Antony Ralph Marinon Opatha (5 August 1947 – 11 September 2020) was a Sri Lankan cricketer. [1] A right-arm medium pace bowler, he played five One Day Internationals at the 1975 and 1979 Cricket World Cups. [2] [3]
Educated at St. Peter's College, Colombo, Opatha joined the Royal Ceylon Volunteer Air Force in 1968. He had played for his college cricket team and went on to play for the air force cricket team until 1977. He first played for Ceylon in 1971 and was a member of the Sri Lankan teams in the World Cups in England in 1975 and 1979. He later played club cricket in Ireland for one season in 1979 and was offered the post of coach of the Holland team. [4]
As player/manager of the rebel tour to South Africa in 1982–83 in defiance of the sporting ban against the apartheid state, Opatha and the other tourists received a lifetime ban from international cricket. The name of the team, "Arosa Sri Lankan XI", derived from Opatha's initials ARO plus SA for South Africa. The ban was lifted in 1991. [5]
Opatha was coach of the Netherlands women's national cricket team at the 1995 Women's European Cricket Cup in Ireland. [6]
In September 2018, Opatha was one of 49 former Sri Lankan cricketers felicitated by Sri Lanka Cricket, to honour them for their services before Sri Lanka became a full member of the International Cricket Council (ICC). [7] [8]
The South African rebel tours were a series of seven cricket tours staged between 1982 and 1990. They were known as the rebel tours because the international cricketing bodies banned South Africa from competitive international cricket throughout this period because of apartheid. As such the tours were organised and conducted in spite of the express disapproval of national cricket boards and governments, the International Cricket Conference and international organisations such as the United Nations. The tours were the subject of enormous contemporaneous controversy and remain a sensitive topic throughout the cricket-playing world.
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In October 1982, a representative team of Sri Lankan cricket players undertook a so-called "Rebel tour" to South Africa, to play a series of matches against the South African team colloquially called the 'cuckoo tour'. At the time, the International Cricket Council (ICC) had placed a moratorium on international cricket teams making tours of South Africa, due to the nation's government policy of apartheid, leaving South Africa with no international competition.