Honours for Malinga, Athapaththu in 2019 SLC awards

Chamari Athapaththu won big at the Sri Lanka Annual Cricket Awards 2019 on Tuesday, 3 December, picking up four of the seven awards for women.

Athapaththu, the T20I captain, was declared the best batter in both white-ball formats, the best all-rounder in ODIs and also the best female cricketer of the year. The honours were a recognition of a glorious run in 2019, during which she aggregated 297 and 271 runs from nine innings each in ODIs and T20Is respectively. Her 113 in the first T20I against Australia in Sydney in September was one of the highlights of the year.

ODI captain Shashikala Siriwardene was named best bowler and best all-rounder in T20Is, while the experienced Oshadi Ranasinghe was named best bowler in ODI cricket.

In the men's categories, Test captain Karunaratne, who helped Sri Lanka win their first points in the ICC Test Championship with a match-winning century in the first Test against New Zealand in Galle, won the Test batting award, while Dilruwan Perera and Dhananjaya de Silva were named the best bowler and all-rounder respectively.

Lasith Malinga, the T20I captain, won best bowler in ODIs and T20Is. The 36-year-old pacer took 44 wickets from 27 limited-overs games in the period; his most noteworthy performance came in the round-robin fixture at Headingley in the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup 2019 match against eventual champions England, where he took 4/43 to power his side to a 20-run win.

Kusal Perera won both awards for limited-overs batting, while Thisara Perera was the best ODI all-rounder and Isuru Udana won the award for T20Is.

Kumar Dharmasena, who officiated in the second semi-final and the final of the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup 2019, was also recognised.

A total of 50 awards were presented for international and domestic performances between 1 September 2018 and 31 August 2019.