Romesh Kaluwitharana
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| Romesh Kaluwitharana | ||||
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 Sri Lanka |
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| Personal information | ||||
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| Batting style | Right-hand bat | |||
| Bowling style | - | |||
| Career statistics | ||||
| Tests | ODIs | |||
| Matches | 49 | 189 | ||
| Runs scored | 1933 | 3711 | ||
| Batting average | 26.12 | 22.22 | ||
| 100s/50s | 3/9 | 2/23 | ||
| Top score | 132* | 102* | ||
| Balls bowled | - | - | ||
| Wickets | - | - | ||
| Bowling average | - | - | ||
| 5 wickets in innings | - | - | ||
| 10 wickets in match | - | n/a | ||
| Best bowling | - | - | ||
| Catches/stumpings | 93/26 | 132/75 | ||
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As of 9 February 2006 |
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Romesh Shantha Kaluwitharana (born November 24, 1969, Colombo) is a former Sri Lankan cricketer who played in 49 Tests and 189 ODIs from 1990 to 2004. He was appointed as the interim cricket coach of Malaysia on the 17th of May 2008.
His early career made him look like a good Sri Lankan prospect, and the undoubted highlight of his career was the entertaining innings of 132 not out (including 26 boundaries) that he made on Test debut against a powerful Australian side in 1992. However, he failed to deliver on his promise in a declining Sri Lankan team (prior to the revival of Sri Lankan cricket at the 1996 World Cup).
Once in the national side, he sometimes threw his wicket away due to poor shot-selection and was suspect to the swinging delivery. However he relished pace and would often be quick to put away any delivery off line or length. His greatest contribution to ODIs came after he was promoted to the top of the batting order to partner opener Sanath Jayasuriya during the 1995-96 tour of Australia, helping to give birth to an aggressive batting approach in the first fifteen overs of fielding restrictions which has become known as pinch-hitting.
He was the perfect foil to Jayasuriya with his fearless and aggressive approach right from the start of his innings that no one had dared to try before. The two of them revolutionized the one day game during the 1996 world cup and paved the way for the modern game, providing inspiration to many openers such as Adam Gilchrist and Chris Gayle who have succesfully emulated this style of opening an innings in limited over cricket.
The pair's scoring rate was an integral figure in Sri Lanka's astonishing World Cup victory that winter. From then on, his batting style tempered somewhat and he set himself to play longer innings. The emergence of Kumar Sangakkara led to his marginalization after 2000, although he made sporadic returns for both the one-day and Test team.
The selectors' decision to ask Sangakkara to concentrate on his batting in Tests paved the way for a Test return in 2004 but his performances with the bat were patchy (averaging just 19.03 over his last 25 Tests) and, despite scoring 54 in his last Test innings, the selectors indicated a desire to look to the future when he was omitted for a 20-man training pool for New Zealand later in the year paving the way for Sangakkara to take over wicket-keeping duties for the National team.
Romesh has spent a number of years contributing to charity work in the impoverished Northern part of Sri-Lanka along with his long time cricket companion Muttiah Muralitharan.
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