World Cup 2023: Open-chested predator Lahiru Kumara destroys England

In his Twitter intro, Lahiru Kumara describes himself as “a strongly built right arm quick bowler. Gasman Lahiru.” No one quite knows the genesis of the Gasman epithet, or who named him thus. The common reference is that he could bowl at high pace all through the day. Some others think it’s because he is imposingly built, like a Marvel superhero. Whatever be the origins, he was his country’s Gasman against England, bowling 10 mean overs of sustained aggression and hostility. Pace was always his biggest gift once he chanced to lay his hands on a cricket ball. The path he chose was incidental.

He was a hockey player in his teens, but after a cut he sustained on his forehead when playing the sport, his mother burned the hockey gear. He then just walked into the nets in his school and started revving up a serious pace.

Last time when India toured Sri Lanka for a Test series, then bowling coach Champake Ramanayake would rave about a stocky bowler in the nets. “See, he is easily clocking 140 kph, in a couple of years he could be touching 150kph,”

he would aver. By that time, he had already made his debut in Tests, in Zimbabwe.