Born as Pinnaduwage Aravinda de Silva on 17 October 1965 in Colombo, he is a former Sri Lankan cricketer, who is considered one of the finest batsmen produced by the country in world cricket.

De Silva made his debut in Test cricket in 1984 at Lord’s against England. In his early part of the career he was known as a dashing but inconsistent batsman, which earned him the nickname “Mad Max” for his tendency to get out to rash shots. But later he showed up matured and aggressive batting style. He also hold the history of having a successful season of first-class cricket for the English county Kent in 1995 marked a turning point in his

career. De Silva was instrumental in Sri Lanka’s triumph in the 1996 Cricket World Cup. He also has scored a century in each innings of a Test match on two separate occasions. Once of these doubles was 138 and 105, both undismissed, against Pakistan at Colombo’s Sinhalese Sports Club in April 1997. De Silva’s highest test score of 267 happened at Basin Reserve in 1991 against New Zealand. He retired from international cricket in 2003.

Aravinda De Silva joined the English county side Kent in April 1995 after Carl Hooper left Kent to join the West Indies team for the summer. He showed an elegant batting performance in the county cricket owning a couple of brilliant scores taking kent to wins in a row. He was the third most prolific batsman of the County Championship in 1995 after Mark Ramprakash and Nasser Hussain with 1661 runs at an average of 59.32 and six centuries including the highest score of the season, 255.

One of the best performances from him came in the 1996 World Cup Final against Australia, where he took 3 wickets for 42 runs, two catches and then followed that with 107 not out with the bat to secure Sri Lanka a convincing 7 wicket victory. He was also chosen for the Man of the Match award. De Silva was recognized by Wisden in 2002 as the eight most significant batting performance in ODI cricket while his bowling was ranked 82nd in Wisden top 100 bowling chart.

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The Pakistan team will assemble in Karachi on Friday for a brief training camp. The camp is organized ahead of the hurriedly-arranged one-day series against Sri Lanka that will start on Tuesday. The team comprising of fifteen players selected for the three-match assignment and a few reserves will warm up under the supervision of coach Intikhab Alam in Karachi. The camp is held ahead of the series opener at the National Stadium here under lights. The second ODI of the series will be played next

Wednesday and the last match will be played on January 24 in Lahore.

Intikhab, who is also a former Pakistan captain said on Thursday that the main idea behind organizing the camp is to get the players together for a few days before the start of the much-awaited series. He said that the boys are already fit as almost all of them are playing domestic matches. But the management wanted them to spend some time together in the nets before the series begins.

Intikhab also added that the team management and Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik have prepared a strategy against Sri Lanka. He sounded confident that the team has the ability to tackle the touring spin twins - Muttiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis efficiaciously.

The Murali-Mendis spin partnership is considered as the best spin team in the world. Intikhab had earlier said that he was aware of the threat of the duo. Pakistan has lined up the series against Sri Lanka in order to fill in for the cancelled home series against India. Earlier, India was supposed to visit Pakistan in January-February.

India cancelled the tour to Pakistan because of strained relations between the two governments over last year’s terror attacks in Mumbai. After the one-dayers, Sri Lanka will come back to home to host India in a one-day series Jan 28-Feb 14. They will back in Pakistan later for the Test series.

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