Scandals & Feuds ·
Warnapura’s Rebel Tour and the Ban That Followed
Sri Lanka’s first Test captain led AROSA Sri Lanka to apartheid South Africa in 1982. Heavy defeats and 25-year bans followed; the bans were lifted in 1990, but Warnapura never played international cricket again.
In 1982, Bandula Warnapura captained Sri Lanka in its first Test match, against England. That same year, he led a rebel Sri Lankan side to apartheid South Africa, defying a government ban on sporting contact and an international boycott. The tour, known as AROSA Sri Lanka, brought heavy defeats and 25-year bans for its players. Warnapura’s international career ended after four Tests.
The preparations were secretive. In an account given to The Papare and reproduced by Roar Media, Warnapura recalled that the departure arrangements changed while some members of the team were playing a two-day mercantile match. They played the first day but left before the second. He said he had suggested that Mahesh Gunathilake and Bernard Perera feign illness to get out of the match, but they disliked the idea. “In any case that was a huge wrong that we did.”
Warnapura said he told his father about the journey only after returning from the match. The players went to the airport in separate groups. During a stop in Hong Kong, they learned that Sri Lanka’s cricket board had imposed 25-year bans. They also heard a rumour that their match fees would be taxed at 100 percent. The team continued to South Africa.
The side drew three of its 14 matches, all against regional teams, and lost the rest. Its unofficial one-day and Test series against South Africa ended in 4-0 and 2-0 defeats.
The bans were lifted in 1990, long before their full term had elapsed, allowing Warnapura to return to cricket as a coach. He never represented Sri Lanka again.
Warnapura later expressed regret while denying that the tour had been intended to destroy Sri Lankan cricket. “This wasn’t something done to destroy [Sri Lankan] cricket,” he said. “We went on that tour as a protest and to make money.”
After Warnapura died in October 2021, former Sri Lankan captain Mahela Jayawardena remembered him as a coach from his schooldays. “He coached me at Nalanda (college) and was a steady influence in my growth as a cricketer and a person,” Jayawardena wrote.