Roger Wijesuriya easily makes it to the list of most ineffective bowlers to have ever played Test cricket. A left-arm finger spinner by design, he didn’t have a great deal of fizz in his bowling and almost always depended on frustrating the batsmen for a wicket rather than plotting their downfall with craft. Still, he was a force during his U19 days and had reasonable numbers in domestic cricket across both formats. However, like a few other domestic stars in the spin department, he struggled badly at the highest level. Just a solitary Test wicket from almost 98 overs across four Tests is a shambolic stat for any bowler, especially for a spinner who played all his matches in the sub-continent. Opposition batsmen were willing to outdo him in terms of patience and it was a battle that Roger could never win. Even his ODI career was extremely brief and was quite expensive in the games that he played in.

Written by Hariprasad Sadanandan