Vijayakanth Viyaskanth

Sri Lanka’s Viyaskanth replaces Hasaranga at Sunrisers Hyderabad

The wristspinner recently played for MI Emirates in the ILT20 and has also played one T201.

Sunrisers Hyderabad have signed 22-year-old Sri Lanka legspinner Vijayakanth Viyaskanth as a replacement for the injured Wanindu Hasaranga at his reserve price of INR 50 lakh. Hasaranga was officially ruled out of IPL 2024 on Saturday owing to chronic pain in his heel that initially delayed his arrival for the tournament.

Viyaskanth first rose to prominence in December 2020, when he became the youngest player at 18 years and 364 days to feature in the Lanka Premier League for Jaffna Stallions, In that tournament, he also became the first born-and-bred player from Jaffna, in Sri Lanka’s northern tip and once the epicentre of a three-decade-long civil war, to appear in an internationally televised game.

He represented Sri Lanka at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou in one T201. He also impressed with eight wickets in four outings at an economy of 5.43 for title winners MI Emirates where Mahela Jayawardene is the global head of performance at the ILT20.

Rajasthan Royals’ director of cricket and head coach Kumar Sangakkara had brought him in as a net bowler for the team in the IPL last season. He will now be working with another former Sri Lanka player, Muthiah Muralidaran, the bowling coach of Sunrisers.

He has also represented Chattogram Challengers in the Bangladesh Premier League. In 33 T20s, Viyaskanth has 42 wickets at an average of 18.78, an economy of 6.76 and a strike rate of 16.6.

Until early last week, the Sunrisers were hopeful of Hasaranga’s participation at some stage and were awaiting details of his consultation with a specialist in Dubai. On Sunday, Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) communicated to the BCCI that Hasaranga had to be withdrawn from the IPL with an eye on the upcoming T20 World Cup in June-July.

Hasaranga was bought by Sunrisers at his base price of INR 1.5 crore (approx USD 181,000) at the 2024 IPL auction in December, after Royal Challengers Bengaluru, who paid INR 10.75 crore for him in 2022, released him.

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Vijayakanth Viyaskanth spins himself into Jaffna history books

He is the first born-and-bred cricketer from his city to appear in an internationally televised game.

Legspinner Vijayakanth Viyaskanth played for Jaffna Stallions on Friday, and in an unbroken spell of four overs, returned creditable figures of 1 for 29. These are the cricketing facts of Viyaskanth’s Lanka Premier League debut. But they are not the most important ones.

Viyaskanth is the first born-and-bred cricketer from his city to appear in an internationally televised game from Sri Lanka. Jaffna – which Stallions ostensibly represent – is the intellectual and commercial hub of the Tamil north, and has through the course of its history been home to some of the island’s most erudite figures. More recently, the north and the east of the island have also produced a separatist ethnic struggle. From the 80s until 2009, Tamil separatists were locked in a brutal war against the mostly-Sinhalese Sri Lankan state. That the state did not adequately represent them was among the north’s many grievances. As there has never been a born-and-bred northern national cricketer (at least since Sri Lanka achieved Test status), the cricket team has been seen by many as merely a microcosm of a deeply flawed nation.

Viyaskanth is likely aware of this fraught history. Almost certainly he knows how Jaffna was strung up in the Civil War for much of his childhood and the decades that preceded his birth. Without a doubt, he knows that despite the multitude of violence and indignity the war wrought, Jaffna’s love for cricket remained undimmed through the conflict.

Teenaged cricketers of the 90s such as M Kandeepan of Jaffna’s St. John’s college turned the city’s air electric with his savage hitting and his swinging left-arm seam, drawing thousands to major schoolboy games. There are incredible anecdotes from this period – of Kandeepan hooking a six that landed so far out of the ground, the ball was found in a roundabout. Of school cricketers having hundreds of rupees pressed into their palms whenever they played a good innings or delivered an outstanding spell. Perhaps some of this is embellishment. But does that matter? These stories exist. Kandeepan wanted to play for Sri Lanka, but because he was a northern Tamil in wartime, he never had the chance to try. Many in Jaffna still think he would have been one of the island’s greatest.

Two decades after Kandeepan, Viyaskanth debuted for Sri Lanka’s Under-19 team, in July 2018, at the Sooriyawewa ground in which the LPL is being played. On Friday, he became the first Jaffna cricketer to play in the LPL side bearing his city’s name. Through the course of his spell, he conceded only three boundaries, and delivered eight dot balls. He bowled four deliveries to Andre Russell and gave away only a single.

That he is also the youngest cricketer to play in this tournament – one day shy of his 19th birthday – is almost incidental. But he received his cap from Thisara Perera, the player of the tournament so far. Right through his spell, he was constantly encouraged by Wanindu Hasaranga, the senior legspinner in the team, and a player who hails from Galle, the southernmost major city on the island. Hasaranga had unusually fielded at short cover for Viyaskanth’s overs, specifically for the purpose of supporting the team’s junior bowler. Later, after the match ended, Angelo Mathews would congratulate Viyaskanth on his debut on Twitter. Mathews was Viyaskanth’s first wicket in senior cricket.

Such things speak to the profound power of sport, if not to unite, then at least to produce some of the emotional conditions for unity. Viyaskanth bowled a tight spell and muted one of the most devastating hitters on the planet, but there are limits to what he could achieve – he could not heal deep ethnic wounds, right decades of structural injustice, or even bring victory to his team. And yet in the fact of his playing, and perhaps in the manner of it, there was so much more meaning than in a win.