Marvan Atapattu

Marvan Samson Atapattu is a former Sri Lankan cricketer and former Sri Lankan captain. Towards the end of his career he joined the Indian Cricket League and captained the Delhi Giants. He is the current coach of Singapore national cricket team.

Marvan Atapattu is one of the most technically correct batsmen that Sri Lanka has ever produced. He started his cricket career as a teenager at Mahinda College, Galle, where Major G. W. S. de Silva was his first cricket coach. Then he crossed over to Ananda College, Colombo, where he was subsequently coached by P. W. Perera. Making his Test debut in November 1990 just after his 20th birthday, his first six innings yielded five ducks and a 1, but supporters insist that his debut-innings duck puts him in good company with batsmen such as Michael Atherton, Graham Gooch, Len Hutton, Saeed Anwar and Wasim Akram, who all made debut-innings ducks and went on to score at least 2500 Test runs. After this difficult start in his first three matches, he didn't score above 29 in his next 11 innings, before hitting his first Test century in his 10th match, against India, seven years after his debut. He has 22 Test-match career ducks and 4 pairs (two ducks in a single match), both records for a top-order batsman. He made his one-Day International debut against India at Nagpur.He was appointed as captain of the one-day team on April 2003. He registered his highest Test score of 249 against Zimbabwe in 2004, sharing a 438-run partnership with Kumar Sangakkara for the second wicket. For three years he stood as Jayasuriya's understudy before being appointed to lead the one-day side in April 2003. He had been expected to take charge of the Test team as well, but the selection committee appointed Hashan Tillakaratne for that job. Atapattu's career took another bizarre twist later in the year when embroiled in the cash-in-the-bedroom affair in which a match-fixing investigation was initiated after a large sum of cash was discovered in the safe of the hotel room he had occupied during England's tour in 2003. The ICC later cleared Atapattu of any wrongdoing and the likeliest explanation for the mystery remains a crude attempt to blacken his reputation.

But by early 2004 the team was drifting downwards under Tillakaratne and the selectors were finally compelled to appoint Atapattu as the Test captain. Within weeks he had halted the team's slide and established himself as a strong leader. On the surface a quiet and reserved character, his captaincy pedigree was not entirely obvious to the outsider, but within the dressing-room he was a straight-talking and positive captain, firm and fair in his dealings with the players and aggressive in his approach to the game. By mid-2004 the fortunes of the team had changed as Sri Lanka won the Asia Cup and whitewashed South Africa. The team fared poorly in the ICC Champions Trophy but perked up against Pakistan in October 2004.

But Atapattu's capacity for attracting the unexpected continued when, out of the blue, Ashantha de Mel, the new government-appointed chairman of selectors, launched a scathing attack on the team management on the eve of the Paktel Cup in 2004-05, accusing them of blocking his attempts to blood new players. Atapattu wisely steered clear of a public confrontation, though his relationship with the selectors remained prickly.

His career was put on hold by a back injury early in 2006 which led to Mahela Jayawardene taking on the captaincy. He was slowly reintroduced to the one-day side, but his tussles with the selectors continued. He was a late inclusion on the Australian tour following a ministerial intervention to bring him into the squad, but midway through the series he hit out at the selectors again, calling them "a set of Muppets headed by a joker". He scored two half-centuries in the series, including 80 in the second innings in Hobart, but announced his retirement from international cricket on the last day of the Test.

Atapattu is a skilful fielder with an accurate throw. He was controversially left out of the squad for the 2007 Cricket World Cup, and as a result, asked for his removal from the list of Sri Lanka contracted players. Atapattu was to miss the 2007-08 tour of Australia, but was added to the squad after the intervention of Sri Lankan Sports Minister Gamini Lokuge. Atapattu played solidly in the First Test, but subsequently angrily labelled the selectors: "A set of Muppets, basically, headed by a joker," at a post-stumps press conference.

After Sri Lanka lost the series 2-0, Atapattu announced his international retirement after the second Test at Hobart. He finished with 5,502 Test runs at an average of 39.02 in 90 Tests with a One-day International average of 37.57 after hitting 8,529 runs in 268 matches. Atapattu scored six double centuries and sixteen centuries in his Test cricket career. He has scored centuries against all Test-playing nations.