Sri Lankan first-class player Dhanuka Pathirana entered record books on sunday, when he scored a remarkable 277 off 72 balls in a Twenty20 match in Lancashire’s Saddleworth League to steer his Austerlands side to 366 for 2 and an easy win over Droylsden. Pathirana smashed 29 sixes and 18 fours in a devastating display of batting to stun the hosts Droylsden.
Pathirana’s innings of 277 produced a new Saddleworth and District Cricket League individual batting record as he eclipsed the previous best of 260 set by Peter Hutchinson, also of Austerlands, six years ago.
Pathirana said,
Everything seemed to hit the middle of the bat, I was seeing it like a football. It was like a dream, I think I did some serious damage to some of the vehicles in the car park.
Manchester Evening News quoted Andy Young, the Austerlands club representative as saying,
It was unbelievable, Dhanuka normally bats at No 3 but we needed to up our run rate to reach the semi-finals, so we asked him to open and said to him: ‘Just go for it. And he certainly did. It was scary to watch and it wasn’t on one of the smaller grounds in our league. He is one of those guys who we always knew was capable of a massive innings, but this was incredible.
