Dinuk Hettiarachchi | Daily News

Dinuk Hettiarachchi

Dinuk Hettiarachchi
Dinuk Hettiarachchi

At 41 years of age and around 960 first class wickets under his belt he looked fit enough for many more. Dinuk was short, dark and muscular with energy to spare. He had to play under the shadow of another loyal servant to Sri Lanka Cricket the one and only Rangana Herath. Both were similar in build and bowled slow left arm. While Rangana stole the lime light when the great Muralitharan left, Dinuk had to wait in the wings. He was however never discouraged by being left out of the Test team. Dinuk diligently plied his trade playing for several clubs and now he is just 40 odd wickets away in reaching the milestone of 1000 wickets. Slow left armers for some strange reason seemed to last longer than the other types of spinners, Sir Wilfred Rhodes, Headly Verity, Colin Blyth, Charlie Parker, Johnny Wardle and several others, is it the rhythm of the action with a short run up? I leave it to the experts.

Dinuk was born in and around Ananda College and attended Asoka Kanishta primary before entering Ananda College where he was coached by the late great P.W. Perera. Dinuk stated that it was none other than Minister Arjuna Rantunga who was a senior player in the team then, threw the new ball at him first up and asked him to bowl. This was a totally new experience to the young lad; Dinuk pondered whether it was due to his prominent side on action which induced inswing.

It is interesting to note that in Dinuk’s bag of tricks he had different types of deliveries which were bowled without changing his grip; this he said was by changing his wrist position. Another tool in his armory was the arm rotation speed and him being closer to earth at 5 feet 4 inches he could loop the ball above the eye level of the batsman and it would be awkward for the batsman to follow its path, (schoolboys who intend becoming slow left arm bowlers please note).

In his book, “Glances at Perfection”, Rajan Bala stated that he knew almost instinctively what Vinoo Mankad, a stocky and powerful man, was the sort who could keep at spin bowling day after day without tiring, would bowl. It is an interesting metaphor to note that Dinuk also looks stocky and dark and he has been wheeling away over after over in all the top class grounds in Sri Lanka and will wait for the day that he would bag his 1000th first class wicket. Already he is third in the list of highest wicket takers behind Muralitharan and Herath.

Dinuk’s cricket is not only confined to Sri Lanka, he travels to UK, Australia and even to U.S.A. playing in various leagues in those countries.

Dinuk is a prominent figure in the Northern Premier League in England where he is the senior pro at St Anne’s cricket club U.K. He has made headlines on several occasions on the local papers and here goes:

“Hettiarachchi on a title mission” by ANDY MOORE ON THE GUARDIAN FRIDAY JULY 16,2010

“Dinuk Hettiarachchi believes St Anne’s can retain their Northern Premier League title- and that would be an even greater achievement than last year. There even greater pressure on the club’s professional to lead a less experienced bowling attack in his second season at Vernon Road and so far the Sri Lankan has risen to the challenge in supreme style. The left arm spinner is again the league’s top scorer, passing 50 with his 6-32 in the 10 wicket thrashing of Chorley last week end, and looks set to top last season’s bench mark of 87.”

‘Dinuk keeps St Anne’s on top’ -The Guardian Monday may 30th, 2011.

“St Anne’s restricted the visitors to 138-8 in 50 overs, pro Dinuk Hettiarachchi wheeling his way through 25 overs for 5-37.

(Due to space restrictions I can only do the headlines of these.)

‘Dinuk’s great eight can’t save St Anne’s’

The Gazette Monday July 4th 2011

‘Reason for Dinuk’s Sunny disposition’

By ANDY MOORE THE GAZZETTE JULY 1,2011

Dinuk was termed as the high profile senior player at his club St Anne’s and I was given the opportunity to peep into the other side of the senior pro’s life, over the weekends. Dinuk had to represent his club and during the other days he was involved with coaching duties of several schools in and around Blackpool which is situated in the county Lancashire. Dinuk said the perks he had was as follows a 3 bedroomed fully furnished house with the best of food stuff at his disposal and a brand new Audi with only 50 km on the clock. Moneywise Dinuk said that during his latest stint with St Anne’s he was paid around Rs. 8 lakhs a month net for a six months stint. This was quite a lot of jam for a guy who persevered and Dinuk deserved every bit of it, apart from this he travels to other parts of the globe plying his trade.

Dinuk is of the view that there were a lot of guys who missed the bus and hence not given the opportunity unless you bum sucked the ones who mattered and he stressed quite emphatically that the cricket drain is due to that fact. Dinuk stated that players in the caliber of Malinga Bandara, Michael van Dort, Kaushal Weeraratne are residing in the district of Dandenong, a suburb in Melbourne and are PR holders involved in cricket in their adopted country and they are gone for good when there was a lot left in them, concluded Dinuk.


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