Clifton Village is delighted to announce the signing of Sri Lankan batting all-rounder, Pawantha Weerasinghe, for their 2024 Nottinghamshire Premier League campaign.

Weerasinghe is quite the talent who broke into professional cricket in 2019/20. He made an immediate impression on his first-class debut (Feb 2020) for the star-studded Colombo side.

Opening the innings, Weerasinghe struck scores of 37 and 42 against a Sinhalese attack featuring Sri Lankan bowlers Dasun Shanaka and Jeffrey Vandersay.

In his second match, he notched up his maiden half-century, hitting 82 in the second innings against Burgher Recreation Club (alongside a maiden first-class wicket).

In his final outing of the summer, he scored a second-innings 31 against Negombo. It’s fair to say, Weerasinghe had made a decent start.

Unfortunately, COVID stunted his progress, but he has returned to the first-class fold in 2022 and is currently playing for Ace Capital Cricket Club.

At the point of writing, Weerasinghe averages late 20s in both first-class, and List A cricket, whilst he has excelled with his off spin in the T20 format, averaging high teens.

His success in Premier cricket has come as no surprise to those that have tracked his glittering junior career. A schoolboy prodigy, he starred for Mahanama College, winning numerous awards along the way courtesy of his run-scoring and wicket-taking exploits.

A gifted opening / top-order batter who bowls off-spin, during his final two seasons of schoolboy cricket in the Under-19 Division 1 (Two-Day) competition, he scored 926 runs at 54.47 (2018/19), and 745 runs and 43.82, alongside 19 wickets at 19.05 (2019/20).

During this period, he was the first double centurion (226) of the Singer League School Tournament. He scored a further century and took best match figures of 7-73 during the tournament.

In 2018/19, he was ranked as the 7th best schoolboy batter in Sri Lanka. He was also the Man of the Match (2017), Best Batter (2018), and Best Bowler (2019) in the prestigious “Battle of the Golds” one-day encounters.

A true leader, he has also skippered the majority of the sides he’s played for over the years, including his College, the Colombo North District side, and the Colombo U19 Super Provincial winning team in 2019.

Weerasinghe really is a high-class talent, who is set to embark on his maiden UK stint in 2024 having signed with Clifton Village for their Nottinghamshire Premier League campaign.