Matheesha Pathirana was roped in by Chennai Super Kings (CSK) as Adam Milne's replacement for IPL 2022 after the latter was ruled out of the tournament, and the pacer named 'junior Malinga' owing to his likeliness to the legendary pacer finally made his T20I debut for Sri Lanka in their Asia Cup 2022 tournament opener against Afghanistan on Saturday.
The 19-year-old has been heralded as the next big thing in Sri Lankan cricket. He's got a slinging action similar to that of Malinga, and CSK also wished their youngster well for his first T20I match at the international level.
Taking to Twitter, the four-time IPL champs shared a pic of Pathirana receiving his debut T20I cap in front of his teammates, and they had the sweetest caption for him.
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"Slingshotting into the Asian Cup ring! Super Debut, Matheesha!" wrote CSK on the micro-blogging platform.
Matheesha Pathirana came into the spotlight when he bowled an incredible 175 kmph delivery to India’s Yashasvi Jaiswal, during the ICC U-19 World Cup in 2020 in South Africa. While he became a huge talking point at the time, it was later revealed that the figure was misquoted due to a glitch in the review system.
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The 19-year-old has been a reserve bowler for CSK since 2020, but after the injury crisis, with Deepak Chahar also ruled out for the season, CSK had drafted Pathirana into their first team, for his base price of INR 20 lakh.
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