in his next five Tests, all on his home ground, the SSC in Colombo. This stunning start to international cricket cemented his spot in the middle order, a spot which had holes to fill with the retirements of Aravinda de Silva and Hashan Tillakaratne. He emerged as a frontline batsman in international arena at a time when many Sri Lankan batsmen were nearing the end of their prime. However, he was in and out of Sri Lankan limited overs team as he made a comeback return to the ODI side in 2005 after two years. His off-spin has been rarely called upon by his captain but when he comes on he has earned a reputation as a partnership breaker. After a poor Test series in England in which he failed to reach double figures in any of his four innings, he was dropped from the side. He was made captain of Sri Lanka A before earning a recall for the first Test against Australia in Brisbane. He scored 13 and 20 and was promptly dropped when Kumar Sangakkara returned to the side for the second game in Hobart. This was followed by his non-inclusion in the squad to play England in the first Test in Kandy. Samaraweera was included in the Sri Lankan team to play the Test series in Pakistan in February – March 2009. This series was conducted after the Indian team withdrew from a scheduled series in Pakistan, following the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Samaraweera started off the series in superb form, hitting consecutive double centuries – 231 in the first Test in Karachi and 214 in the second Test in Lahore. He too has the record for the highest individual score for Sri Lanka when batting at number 5 position in tests when he scored 231 against Pakistan. Also, Thilan Samaraweera was the first ever Sri Lankan to score a test century at number 8 position and holds the record for the highest score for Sri Lanka jointly with Kithuruwan Vithanage at number 8 position in tests (103*) During the test tour of Pakistan in 2009, he was highlighted for his machine gun celebration after scoring a century and it was considered as a quite new celebration by a player in international cricket at that time although he did it on numerous occasions in domestic circuit. In February 2009, he shared a record-breaking partnership of 437