Sri Lankan batters account for five of the 15 hit-wicket dismissals recorded in tournaments between International Cricket Council full members since 2023 — a third of the total, and more than any other country — according to a count compiled by Hiru News.
Hit wicket is among cricket’s rarest modes of dismissal: a batter is out when they dislodge the bails with their bat, body or equipment while playing a shot or setting off for a run.
The five
The Sri Lankans in the tally are Angelo Mathews and Sadeera Samarawickrama in 2024, Janith Liyanage in 2025, and Dushan Hemantha and Wanindu Hasaranga so far in 2026, Hiru reported.
The still published with the report shows one of them: a batter in Sri Lanka’s blue one-day kit, shirt number 49 and the name Samarawickrama across the back, on the ground beside a broken wicket with his bat still against the stumps.
The rest of the field
Hiru’s breakdown of the remaining ten gives two each to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Zimbabwe, and one each to Australia, the West Indies, India and Bangladesh. It records none at all for England, New Zealand and South Africa.
The figures reconcile exactly: five plus ten is the stated total of 15.
What the claim does and does not cover
The headline conclusion is narrower than it sounds, and the qualifiers matter.
The count is limited to tournaments involving full-member nations, from 2023 onward. It is not a tally of all international cricket, not all-time, and not across all formats and fixtures — bilateral series outside tournament play appear to fall outside it, though Hiru does not spell out its inclusion criteria.
A second figure in the report is harder to place. Hiru states that Sri Lanka contributed nine of 44 instances in 2015, which it describes as the highest for a single country. The report does not say what competitions, formats or level of cricket that 44 covers, nor how it relates to the 2023–2026 series, and the two sets of numbers are not presented on a common basis.
Attribution
This is Hiru’s own research, credited in the report to its sports division. It is not an ICC statistic, nor one drawn from a published statistical database, and the underlying match list has not been released.
We were not able to verify the totals against an independent statistical source, and the figures above should be read as Hiru’s count rather than as a confirmed record. No other verified newsroom had carried the item at the time of writing.
