Roshan Mahanama is a former Sri Lankan cricketer and former ICC match referee. He was a key member in the 1996 Cricket World Cup wining team for Sri Lanka. He is the first man to stand as a match referee in a day-night Test match in history.
The high point of his school career was his splendid unbeaten knock of 145 runs in the ‘Big Match’ against Ananda which established a record when he captained the team in 1984.
With such wonderful promise that he held out as a schoolboy at Nalanda College, it was no surprise that he would climb the ladder of success – and climb he did in inter-school cricket seasons and it was no surprise that the judges in the Observer Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year Contests picked him as Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year for two years in succession in 1983 and 1984.
A dashing right-hand batsman and brilliant fielder Roshan Mahanama is best remembered as a cricketer for his world record second wicket partnership of 576 with Sanath Jayasuriya in a Test Match against India at the R. Premadasa Stadium in 1997, since surpassed by Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene in 2006.
Mahanama’s contribution to that partnership was 225, the, highest score of his career. He was a key member of Sri Lanka’s World Cup wining side of 1996. Roshan Mahanama established himself as a stylish opening batsman in the late 1980s and early 1990s under the captaincy of Aravinda de Silva.
In the 1992 Cricket World Cup, Roshan Mahanama was selected as opening batsman along with M.A.R. Samarasekera and U.C. Hathurusinha, scoring 59 runs off 89 balls vs Zimbabwe, 80 runs off 131 balls vs New Zealand and 68 runs off 121 balls vs South Africa.
Following his retirement from international cricket in 1999, Roshan Mahanama made the transition into becoming an International Cricket Council match referee.
He made his debut as a match referee in the ODI between West Indies and Bangladesh in Kingstown 2004.