TILLAKARATNE DILSHAN
We didn’t want to fill this list with converted openers, but the story of Dilshan – that of the meek middle-order bit-part prodder turned whirling shot-inventing dervish at the top of Sri Lanka’s order – just could not be ignored, and his rebirth just pips Graham Gooch in this sub-sub-category of cricketing David Bowies.
As an opener he walloped eight Test tons, 16 ODI centuries at 45.85 in 137 hits up top, and scooped 90mph bowlers clean over his head in the Twenty20 stuff. If T20 has reinvented the modern game and stretched its boundaries, then Dilshan, diamond stud and all, was, for a time, the revolution’s poster boy.
We didn’t want to fill this list with converted openers, but the story of Dilshan – that of the meek middle-order bit-part prodder turned whirling shot-inventing dervish at the top of Sri Lanka’s order – just could not be ignored, and his rebirth just pips Graham Gooch in this sub-sub-category of cricketing David Bowies.
As an opener he walloped eight Test tons, 16 ODI centuries at 45.85 in 137 hits up top, and scooped 90mph bowlers clean over his head in the Twenty20 stuff. If T20 has reinvented the modern game and stretched its boundaries, then Dilshan, diamond stud and all, was, for a time, the revolution’s poster boy.
.jpg)
