Ginigalgodage Ramba Ajit de Silva (born 12 December 1952, Ambalangoda, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

) is a former Sri Lankan

Sri Lankan cricket team

The Sri Lankan cricket team is the national cricket team of Sri Lanka. The team first played international cricket in 1926–27, and were later awarded Test status in 1981, which made Sri Lanka the eighth Test cricket playing nation...

 cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er. He played four Test matches

Test cricket

Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

 and six ODIs for Sri Lanka, bowling accurate slow left arm spin bowling to little effect. In his last three Tests, he only got three wickets, and he was in and out of the team until 1982/83

83

Year 83 was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Augustus and Rufus...

, when he went on a tour with an International XI to South Africa

South African cricket team

The South African national cricket team represent South Africa in international cricket. They are administrated by Cricket South Africa.South Africa is a full member of the International Cricket Council, also known as ICC, with Test and One Day International, or ODI, status...

. Due to this, he was excluded from world cricket, along with the rest of the players on that tour. His statistics, however, suggest that he was hardly a key member of the team - indeed, he had been dropped from both the Test and ODI squad at times. He did, however, take a vital part in Sri Lanka's first ODI victory on home soil - against England

English cricket team

The England and Wales cricket team is a cricket team which represents England and Wales. Until 1992 it also represented Scotland. Since 1 January 1997 it has been governed by the England and Wales Cricket Board , having been previously governed by Marylebone Cricket Club from 1903 until the end...

 in 1982. Sri Lanka had batted first, setting England 216 to win, and Graham Gooch

Graham Gooch

Graham Alan Gooch OBE DL is a former cricketer who captained Essex and England. He was one of the most successful international batsmen of his generation, and through a career spanning from 1973 until 2000, he became the most prolific run scorer of all time with 67,057 runs...

 and Geoff Cook

Geoff Cook

Geoff Cook is a former English cricketer, who played in seven Tests and six ODIs from 1981 to 1983...

had set a good platform as the score moved to 109 for no loss. However, de Silva removed both openers, four players were run out, and England lost by three runs.