Galle: Sri Lankan cricket's crown jewel of the south

GALLE: Jayananda Warnaweera has a special relation with the Galle International Cricket Stadium. He is the first international cricketer from this region to represent his country in 10 Tests. He is also part of a select few to have experienced a Test series defeat at home at the hands of India. "Those days we hardly got to see any international cricket. We got very few teams touring us.We were practically losing to every team and never won a series consistently till 1996.
"After the World Cup win, Sri Lankan cricket went through their golden age with the likes of Aravinda de Silva, Arjuna Ranatunga, Roshan Mahatma and Asanka Gurusinha in their line-up," Warnaweera, who bowled off-spin in his heydays, told TOI.
Warnaweera is the first of many cricketers who have come up from the southern Sri Lanka. Galle in many ways is the crown jewel of this region in cricketing terms. "South always provided good cricketers and still does. I was the first Test cricketer, then there was Atul Samarasekara, Champaka Ramanayake and Upul Chandana. In the current team there is Upul Tharanga and Dinesh Chandimal. Even in SL 'A' side has lot of players from here and our U-19 captain is from this region," the 54-year-old secretary of the South Province Cricket Association said.
The ground, of course, has seen its dark days when the stadium was completely destroyed due to a devastating tsunami back in 2004. "I was here that day when the tsunami struck and watched as something we built passionately for six years get washed away. We were in dark for almost six months and no one cared about cricket because people lost everything. We were biding our time and hope finally flourished thanks to former president Jayantha Dharmadasa.
He remembers Indian opener Virender Sehwag's 201 back in 2001 very fondly."This ground has seen many great innings like Chris Gayle's triple century, Sangakkara has two doubles and of course Sehwag's double century. It's not easy to score a century on this track but when you score a double it's something really special," he said.