Lasith Malinga, ace Sri Lankan bowler, announced his retirement from ODI cricket – after helping Sri Lanka beat Bangladesh with impressive figures of 3/38. 

In fact, in the very last delivery of his career, the right-arm paceman dismissed Mustafizur Rahman for 18 runs and became the 9th highest wicket-taker of ODI cricket. And that truly feels like the perfect summary of his long and impressive on-field performance.  

HT

After 15 years of exemplary bowling, he was not just a gift to Sri Lanka, but to the world of cricket. He made his retirement announcement during the post-match presentation, while also giving advice to young bowlers: 

I feel it’s the right time for me to retire from ODIs. I have been playing for the last 15 years for Sri Lanka and this is the right time to move on. My time is over and I have to go. I tried my best throughout my career. Some of the young bowlers in the country have a good ability, so they need to try and produce match-winning spells. You have to be a match-winner for your team, that’s my advice.”
New Indian Express

With 338 wickets in 220 innings, Malinga finished as the third-highest wicket-taker in ODI cricket for Sri Lanka. In fact, he was also the team’s highest wicket-taker in the recently concluded World Cup series. The only cricketer to have taken two World Cup hat-tricks (2007 vs South Africa, 2011 vs Kenya), Malinga had retired from Test cricket in 2011. 

Many cricketers and fans of the game took to Twitter to congratulate Malinga for being an exemplary player throughout and to wish him luck for the future:

His sense of style was as distinctive as bowling, and fans of cricket will surely miss the ‘yorker king’.