Sri Lanka v Pakistan Cricket Rivalry

Of the four sides Sri Lanka have played most often, Pakistan are the one they have run closest. Nearly sixty Tests have produced twenty-three Pakistani wins to seventeen Sri Lankan, with nineteen draws — a margin of six across four decades, which by the standards of Sri Lanka's other rivalries is almost parity. The one-day record is less kind, Pakistan leading by something like ninety-three to fifty-nine from past a hundred and fifty-five matches, but even there the fixture has produced more genuine deciders than any other in Sri Lanka's calendar.

Part of the reason is that the two cricket cultures rhyme. Both built sides around spinners who did unusual things with their wrists and fingers, and quick bowlers who were not products of an academy template. Both learned to bowl at the end of an innings before anyone else did. Both have won a global tournament from outside the pre-tournament favourites, and both did it with an attack nobody could plan for. When Sri Lanka and Pakistan play, the cricket is rarely conventional and almost never dull.

And no fixture in world cricket carries a heavier morning than this one. On 3 March 2009 a Sri Lankan team bus was attacked in Lahore, and the consequences of that hour shaped where Pakistan played international cricket for the next decade.

Karachi and Lahore, 1982: an unequal start

The two sides first met in a Test at the National Stadium in Karachi in March 1982, weeks after Sri Lanka had become a Test nation. Pakistan won it by 204 runs. The second Test at Faisalabad was drawn, with Sri Lanka making 454, and Pakistan closed the series at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore with a win by an innings and 102 runs. Pakistan took it 2-0.

That was the pattern of the first few years. Pakistan had Imran Khan, Abdul Qadir and a batting order that had been playing Test cricket since the 1950s; Sri Lanka were still working out how to bat for five days. The Karachi ground where it began has its own history in the guide to the National Stadium in Karachi.

Colombo, March 1986: Kuruppuarachchi and a first win

Pakistan toured Sri Lanka in early 1986 and won the first Test in Kandy by an innings and 20 runs. Then, at the Colombo Cricket Club ground in mid-March, Sri Lanka bowled Pakistan out for 132 in the first innings and won by eight wickets. It was their first Test victory over Pakistan.

The bowler who did it was a debutant left-arm quick, Kosala Kuruppuarachchi, who took five wickets in that first innings. Arjuna Ranatunga made 77 and was named man of the match. Sri Lanka had been a Test side for four years and had now beaten two of the three neighbours who mattered, which is the context for how quickly the mood on the island changed in the second half of the 1980s. The longer arc is set out in Sri Lanka's Test history.

6 April 1986: the first trophy

Three weeks later the same two sides met in the Asia Cup final at the Sinhalese Sports Club. Sri Lanka were hosting the tournament, India had withdrawn from it, and Pakistan were the opponent in the final.

Kaushik Amalean took four wickets, Ranatunga made 57 from 65 balls, and Sri Lanka chased 192 to win by five wickets. It was the first international tournament Sri Lanka had ever won — a decade before the World Cup, and against the side that had beaten them in a Test series a month earlier. The tournament record and Sri Lanka's later Asia Cup campaigns are in Sri Lanka's Asia Cup history.

Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Dubai: a fixture without a home

For long stretches this has been a fixture played in front of expatriate crowds in the Gulf rather than at either side's home grounds. Through the 1980s and 1990s it was the Sharjah tri-series circuit, where a Sri Lanka-Pakistan match on a Friday afternoon drew a bigger crowd than most home internationals.

After 2009 the arrangement stopped being a commercial choice and became a necessity. Pakistan played their home series in the United Arab Emirates for the better part of a decade, and Sri Lanka were among the sides who toured them there. That whole displaced era is covered in Pakistan's home series in the UAE. One consequence is that a generation of Sri Lankan and Pakistani cricketers played each other most often on drop-in-flat surfaces in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, in front of crowds who had travelled from a third country.

That had a flattening effect on the cricket. Neither side got the conditions that make them distinctive — Pakistan lost the cracked, dry surfaces that reward reverse swing, Sri Lanka lost the low bounce and heavy afternoon dew that shape a Colombo one-dayer — and matches were decided instead by whoever handled a slow outfield and a dead ball better. It is one reason the Test results between the two look closer over the last fifteen years than the underlying quality of the two sides in that period would suggest.

February and March 2009: Karachi, then Lahore

The first Test of what became the last Sri Lankan tour of Pakistan for a decade was played at the National Stadium from 21 February 2009, and it was a run-glut. Sri Lanka declared on 644 for seven. Thilan Samaraweera made 231 and Mahela Jayawardene 240, and their fourth-wicket stand of 437 remains one of the largest partnerships ever made for that wicket in Test cricket. Pakistan batted out a draw.

It is worth recording the innings on its own terms, because of what happened next. Samaraweera, who had just made the highest score of his Test career, was shot in the leg on the way to the ground in Lahore the following week.

The attack

On the morning of the third day of the second Test in Lahore, the team convoy was ambushed on the way to the Gaddafi Stadium. Twelve gunmen opened fire on the bus.

Six Pakistani police officers and two civilians were killed. Six Sri Lankan cricketers were injured. Thilan Samaraweera was shot in the leg and was the worst hurt; Tharanga Paranavitana was also hit, and the captain Mahela Jayawardene, his deputy Kumar Sangakkara and Ajantha Mendis suffered lesser injuries. The bus driver, Mehar Mohammad Khalil, kept driving the remaining few hundred metres to the stadium, which is the reason the casualty list was not longer.

The Test was abandoned and the tour ended. So, effectively, did international cricket in Pakistan. Full-member sides declined to tour for years, and the Pakistan Super League and the national team's home fixtures moved abroad. The story of how the domestic game was rebuilt in that period is in the cricket in Pakistan hub.

Lord's, 21 June 2009

Fifteen weeks after Lahore, the same two sides met in the World Twenty20 final at Lord's.

Sangakkara was Sri Lanka's captain, having recovered from the injuries of March. Abdul Razzaq took three for 20 and broke the top order; Sri Lanka reached 138 for six. Shahid Afridi then made 54 not out, Shoaib Malik 24, and Pakistan won by eight wickets with eight balls to spare. It was Pakistan's first global title since 1992 and the only one they have won in the shortest format.

The proximity of the two events is not incidental to how either side remembers the year. Sri Lanka had lost the previous year's World Twenty20 semi-final stage and would go on to lose the 2012 final at home as well before finally winning in 2014; Pakistan, playing a tournament in a country that was effectively their surrogate home ground, won the thing. The 2009 tournament sits in the World Twenty20 archive, and Sri Lanka's own record in the format is in Sri Lanka's T20 international history.

2017 to 2019: putting the fixture back in Pakistan

Sri Lanka were also the side that took the first steps back. A Twenty20 international was played at the Gaddafi Stadium in October 2017, eight years after the attack, with a Sri Lankan squad that had lost several players to withdrawal.

Two years later they returned for a full tour. Ten senior players opted out of the one-day leg in September 2019, so Sri Lanka arrived in Karachi with a side few people outside the selection committee could have named. Pakistan won the one-day matches. Then, in Lahore in October, that same understrength Sri Lankan squad won all three Twenty20 internationals — the first time Pakistan had been whitewashed in a three-match series in the format, and Sri Lanka's first bilateral Twenty20 series win over them.

In December 2019 Test cricket returned. Sri Lanka played the first Test series staged in Pakistan since their own tour had been abandoned a decade earlier: a draw at the Pindi Cricket Stadium in Rawalpindi, then a Pakistan win by 263 runs at Karachi. Abid Ali made the runs of the series. Both grounds are covered in the guides to Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium and the National Stadium.

Galle, July 2022: two Tests, two very different weeks

The best Test cricket the fixture has produced recently was played in one ground over a fortnight.

In the first Test Pakistan were set 342 to win in the fourth innings at Galle, which on that surface should have been out of reach. Abdullah Shafique batted 408 balls across 524 minutes for 160 not out and Pakistan won by four wickets — the highest successful chase at the ground and, by time at the crease, one of the longest match-winning fourth-innings innings in Test history. Sri Lanka dropped him twice in the closing stages.

The second Test, on the same square eight days later, went the other way by 246 runs. Prabath Jayasuriya, a left-arm spinner who had made his Test debut a fortnight earlier against Australia with twelve wickets, took eight more in this match and finished the two-Test series with seventeen and the player-of-the-series award. The series was drawn 1-1. Why the same ground can produce both results inside a fortnight is the subject of the guide to Galle International Stadium.

Hyderabad, October 2023: four hundreds in an afternoon

The highest-scoring meeting the two have had came in the 2023 World Cup at Hyderabad. Sri Lanka made 344 for nine, with Kusal Mendis scoring 122 and Sadeera Samarawickrama 108. Pakistan chased it down in 48.2 overs, Mohammad Rizwan making 131 not out and Abdullah Shafique 113, and won by six wickets with ten balls to spare.

At the time it was the highest successful chase in World Cup history, beating a mark that had stood since 2011, and it was the first World Cup match in which four batters made hundreds. It also cost Sri Lanka a tournament: they lost their opening two matches and never recovered the momentum.

Dhaka 2014 and Dubai 2022: two Asia Cup finals

The Asia Cup has given the fixture more finals than any other competition, and Sri Lanka have won the two most recent ones between them.

In Dhaka in March 2014 Pakistan set 261. Lahiru Thirimanne made a hundred, Jayawardene added 156 with him for the second wicket, and Lasith Malinga had already taken five wickets in the Pakistani innings. Sri Lanka won by five wickets with 22 balls left, their first Asia Cup since 2008.

Sri Lanka lost their opening match of the 2022 Asia Cup and won the tournament. The final, in Dubai on 11 September, was against Pakistan: Sri Lanka were 58 for five before Bhanuka Rajapaksa made 71 not out from 45 balls to get them to 170 for six, and Pakistan were bowled out for 147. Sri Lanka won by 23 runs and took the title. That tournament is archived under the 2022 Asia Cup.

Sri Lanka have won the Asia Cup more often than any side except India, and three of those titles were won in a final against Pakistan — 1986, 2014 and 2022. The competition has been the most reliable stage for the fixture precisely because it puts both sides in a knockout at least as often as a World Cup does, and usually in conditions that suit one of them.

Where the fixture sits now is genuinely open, which is more than can be said for most of Sri Lanka's rivalries. Pakistan have the deeper fast-bowling resource and Sri Lanka the better spin stock at home, and both sides have been unstable enough in selection and captaincy that form six months old is close to useless as a guide. For the rest of the Sri Lankan game, including the finger-and-wrist tradition that shaped so many of these matches, start at the cricket in Sri Lanka hub and the guide to Sri Lanka's spin bowling tradition.

Sources and method

This page draws on official scorecards and series records published by the ICC, the Asian Cricket Council, the Pakistan Cricket Board and Sri Lanka Cricket, on contemporaneous reporting of the individual matches described, and on the published record of the 2009 attack including the casualty figures given by Pakistani authorities. Head-to-head totals move with each series and are therefore given in approximate terms. Nothing on this page is computed from our own datasets; the account is descriptive, and where sources differ on a detail of the 1986 series the Test scorecards have been preferred.