Lasith Malinga hopes for one last splash at the World Cup

Asked to bat first, England scored 278/9 in their 50 overs. Sri Lanka had reached 140/5 in 29 overs when play ended because of rain, England going 1-0 up with a 31-run win by the DLS method.

Two English batsmen scored big half-centuries – Joe Root with 71 and Eoin Morgan with 92 – but the performance that stood out was that of Malinga.

The paceman with the slingy action, now 35, sent back Jason Roy for a duck early on and then came back to account for Morgan, Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes and Liam Dawson to end with 5/44.

Arguably still Sri Lanka’s best fast bowler in the shorter formats, Malinga hadn’t played ODI cricket for almost a year before being called up for the Asia Cup 2018 recently, where Sri Lanka were ousted in the first round.

In Dambulla on Saturday, 13 October, though, he showed that he still has the fire – he looked quick, and he was among the wickets. Perfect from Sri Lanka’s point of view ahead of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019.

“I feel that if I get the chance to play the World Cup, I will – it will be my last World Cup. I'm not expecting to get the chance, given the kinds of things that have happened to me over the recent past. But I will take it if it is given,” said Malinga afterwards.

He has had a number of injuries to deal with, and has had long absences from the national team for one reason or another, but took part in a domestic Twenty20 tournament and then the Global T20 Canada league to chart a way back.

“I’m just a player. My only job is to play when I get the chance. When I was out of the team, I went and played in Canada. I also played the district competition and got the highest wickets. Thanks to those performances I got another chance at this level. Because I'm nearing the end of my career I'm motivated to get wickets,” he said.

On the subject of wickets, he brought up the milestone of 500 in international cricket across formats during the second ODI against England.

“This, for a player, is a good achievement. Whoever is the bowler, they are looking for the wickets, every year, or every kind of situation, and opportunity, he is waiting for the wickets,” said Malinga.

“But at the end of the day, if we get wickets, it goes to the team. That’s the most important thing. But 500 wickets – I am really happy, it’s a good milestone.”

The first ODI was washed out, and the second, though affected by rain, got a result, though it didn’t go in Sri Lanka’s favour. There are three more ODIs to be played, and the Sri Lankans are likely to have it tough against the top team in the MRF Tyres ICC Men’s ODI Team Rankings.

“England at the moment is the much better team. The World No.1 team. They have a good batting line-up. But whoever we are playing against, we are just trying to play to our strengths. As an Asian country, we have to use our strength, get the pace down or something like that, the variations are very important to play the big sides. Today we used that according to the situation. So we were successful in the first half,” pointed out Malinga.