Avishka Gunawardene

Dihan Avishka Gunawardene (born May 26, 1977 in Colombo^[1]) is a former professional Sri Lankan cricketer. He is an explosive left-handed opening batsman who first came into the public eye during the 1998 Commonwealth Games, when he scored a century and achieved the highest score in the South African defeat. His only ODI century was 132 against West Indies at Nairobi during the ICC Knock-Out tournament in 2000. In that match, he revived the Sri Lankan innings from a precarious 10/2 to 287/6 and handed the Lankans 108 runs victory. He did not succeed in the longer version of the game. He made his Test debut against Pakistan during the Asian Championship in 1999 with 43 which remains his highest individual score in his 6 Tests.

Despite a few centuries, avoidable dismissals stopped Gunawardene from regularly appearing for the team. Gunawardene's opportunity arose in the Asia Cup in 2004 when Marvan Atapattu was rested for a game. Gunawardene has been involved in Twenty20 cricket since 2004. A ban on he and four other Sri Lankans (imposed for joining the Indian Cricket League) was lifted in September 2008, meaning Gunawardene was free to play domestic cricket in Sri Lanka.

Avishka is currently the head cricket coach of Sinhalese Sports Club and was recently the coach for the winning SLPL 2012 team Uva Next. He also serves as a director at Legacy Travels (Pvt) Ltd.

International Centuries

One-Day International Centuries

ODI Centuries of Avishka Gunawardene
No.	Score	Match	Balls	4s	6s	Against	H/A	Venue	Year	Result
1	132	19	146	19	0	West Indies	Neutral	Gymkhana Club Ground, Nairobi, Kenya	October 2000	Won [2]

References

Sri Lanka squad – 2003 Cricket World Cup Semi-Finalists 1 Jayasuriya (c) 2 Atapattu 3 Jayawardene 4 Sangakkara (wk) 5 De Silva 6 Arnold 7 Mubarak 8 Tillakaratne 9 Muralitharan 10 Vaas 11 Fernando 12 Gunaratne 13 Gunawardene 14 Nissanka 15 Buddhika Coach: Whatmore