History of cricket in Sri Lanka

• The Sri Lanka national cricket team has played Test cricket from 1982. Domestic first-class cricket began in 1988.
• Cricket was brought to the nation when it was colonized by the English. The first recorded cricket match was played in the country as for back as 1832.
• It was in the 1975 inaugural world cup that they made their international debut.
• As everywhere that the British arrived in numbers, cricket soon followed and it is reasonable to assume that the game was first played on the island by 1800.
  Ceylon was renamed Sri Lanka in 1972.
• The earliest definite mention of cricket in Ceylon was a report in the Colombo Journal on 5 September 1832 which called for the formation of a cricket club. The Colombo Cricket Club was formed soon afterwards and matches began in November 1833 when it played against the 97th Regiment.
• First-class cricket in Ceylon became restricted to games against visiting touring teams, notably the English and Australian teams who used Ceylon as a stopover on the long voyage to each other's country. Douglas Jardine's infamous "bodyline team" was there in 1932–33. Occasionally, teams representative of Ceylon played matches abroad, especially in India.
• From 1953–4 until 1975-6, the Ceylon Cricket Association played a first-class match against Madras (latterly renamed Tamil Nadu) for the Gopalan Trophy. This fixture was played in Colombo roughly every two years, with one further fixture in 1982-3, alternating with the fixture being held in Madras.
• Throughout the 20th century, the game became increasingly popular in Sri Lanka and the national team won the ICC Trophy in 1979. On 21 July 1981, Sri Lanka was admitted to full membership of the ICC and was awarded Test Match status.
• The inaugural Test was played at the Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu Stadium in Colombo in February 1982 against England but Sri Lanka lost by 8 wickets.
• The first Indian team to tour Sri Lanka was Elphinstone College, Bombay, in 1903–04.