5 Cricketers who became unexpected captains

3. Dimuth Karunaratne

Dimuth Karunaratne came to captaincy at a time of extreme vulnerability. When the star sensation took the charge of Sri Lankan team, the players already looked shattered and slumped to a quiet place. Before his first series at the helm he seemed like a farmer who had inherited an operation where the crops had been burned, the barn was on fire, and whose fences had been torn apart, and yet somehow he managed to strap all his livestock to the same plough and had them pulling in the same direction.

A middling World Cup as ODI captain followed, and unless you’re the kind of hyper-optimistic fan who goes to sleep in a Sri Lanka shirt and craps blue and yellow, a middling World Cup was the best that could have been hoped for. Through the course of it, Karunaratne showed the glimpse of what he is capable of and eventually went onto produce some clinical performance while leading the team from the front.

Sri Lankan team performed extensively well in his leadership in the recently concluded New Zealand series, where they were able to upstage the World Cup runner ups comprehensively. Months down the line, the supporters will be expecting Karunaratne to get the team back on track so that the lost cricket is found.