Eighteen-year-old Arjuna Ranatunga walked out at Colombo to bat in Sri Lanka's first ever Test innings, scored a debut fifty, and started the career that would end with the 1996 World Cup.
Ranatunga had captained Sri Lanka Schools and had been earmarked as the future of Sri Lankan batting since the age of 15.
Selected at 18 for the inaugural Test, he was the youngest member of the squad.
Ranatunga, born in 1963, was selected for Sri Lanka's inaugural Test at the age of 18 — making him both Sri Lanka's youngest Test cricketer at debut and one of the youngest Test debutants of the decade. In Sri Lanka's first Test innings he scored 54 — the first half-century by a Sri Lankan in Test cricket — and although Sri Lanka lost the match by seven wickets, the schoolboy's poise against Bob Willis, Derek Underwood and John Lever signalled a generational talent. Ranatunga went on to play for Sri Lanka for the next 18 years, captained them through the 1990s, and lifted the 1996 World Cup. The 1982 debut is now folklore in Sri Lankan cricket — a teenager standing at one end while the team's senior batsmen flailed at the other, taking the new nation's first Test fifty.
Selected at 18 for inaugural Test
Debut innings of 54
First Test fifty by a Sri Lankan
Survives Willis-Underwood-Lever attack
Begins 18-year Test career
Feb 1982
Selected for inaugural Test at 18
Debut innings
Scores 54 — first SL Test fifty
1989
Becomes regular Test captain
1996
Lifts World Cup as captain
“I was a schoolboy. I had no idea what I was walking into.”
“He was eighteen and looked like he had been there forever.”
Ranatunga played 93 Tests, captained 56, and led Sri Lanka to the 1996 World Cup.
A debut that announced both a player and a country to Test cricket — and a half-century that remains a foundational scoreline.
His 1982 fifty is the foundational individual score of Sri Lankan Test cricket; his career is the bridge between the 1982 debut and the 1996 World Cup win.
Yorkshire v Essex
1932-06-16
On 15-16 June 1932 Herbert Sutcliffe (313) and Percy Holmes (224*) put on 555 for the first wicket against Essex at Leyton, breaking the world first-class record for any wicket and adding a layer of folklore — including a scoreboard that read 554 for several minutes and a hastily reversed declaration — that has clung to the partnership ever since.
Australia v England
1933-02-14
With the fate of the Bodyline series in the balance and England 216 for 6 chasing 340, Eddie Paynter checked himself out of a Brisbane hospital where he was being treated for acute tonsillitis, taxied to the Gabba in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and batted for nearly four hours to score 83. England drew level on first innings, won the Test by six wickets and the series 4-1.
Australia
1934-09-25
Days after the 1934 Oval Test, Bradman fell seriously ill with appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis. With antibiotics not yet available, he was given little chance of survival; his wife Jessie left Adelaide on a sea voyage to England prepared for the worst. He recovered after weeks of intensive nursing in a London nursing home and returned to first-class cricket the following Australian summer.