Lakshan Sandakan

Cricket’s history has had so few Chinamans that we can count them on our fingertips, Lakshan Sandakan is one of those. He comes from a country that has a rich history of spinners and his left-arm wrist spin makes him a prospect for the future. Sandakan is well known for spinning the ball in both directions, while his skid-on is the hardest to pick. 

Born in Ragama, the then 20-year-old spinner started his first-class journey for Colombo Cricket Club in the 2012 season. However, it was only the 2013-14 season that made Sandakan a star. The tweaker scalped 54 wickets at an average of 19.14 and followed it up with 45 wickets in the following first-class season. There was no looking back for the spinner as he picked for Sri Lanka A to tour England and a national call-up was not so far. 

The Colombo-born made his Test debut against Australia to pick seven wickets on debut in 2016. The following month, the wrist-spinner was selected to make his ODI debut against the same opposition. But the watershed moment in his career arrived in 2017 against touring Indians. In the longest format, Sandakan became the first Chinaman in 14 long years to get to a five-wicket haul in Tests. 

Since then, the spinner has been a regular for Sri Lanka in the white-ball formats but he has lost his place in the Tests, following his fifer against England in 2018. With the emergence of players like Dhananjaya de Silva and Praveen Jayawickrama, Sandakan has lost his prominence a bit, but his calmness promises that the wrist-spinner is the one for the future. 

(As of May 2021)