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Friends, fans congratulate Malinga on an extraordinary career

By Mumbai Indians

Lasith Malinga’s T20 dominance has been undisputed. He climbed highs none dared to see, took strides so massive that he swept through records with every run-up of his. His phenomenal career set the bar for a T20 bowler very high, and the numbers speak for themselves. And his 16-year-old career came to an end with a heartfelt tweet from the man himself.

Here’s a quick scan of the fast bowler’s achievements that will tell us why we speak of Malinga every time we speak of T20 cricket. Currently, Malinga is the leading wicket taker in Men’s T20Is with 107 scalps and at 170 wickets, he sits at the top in the IPL wickets table too.

Overall, Malinga has 390 wickets in T20s, out of which 152 were “bowleds”, the most by any player. This is the highest percentage of bowleds (38.97%) for anyone with over 200 wickets in this format of the game.

Malinga also has 195 wickets for Mumbai Indians alone, a record for the most by a bowler for a single team in T20s. His very second ball of the debut game earned Malinga his first wicket in MI Blue and Gold, while his final ball gave MI a record 4th IPL title after a narrow 1-run win against CSK.

In T20 World Cups, he has 38 wickets, just one below Shahid Afridi. Malinga also captained the iconic 2014 T20 World Cup win for the Sri Lankans, which was also the last international game Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara played in that format.

And when a man of this stature announces his retirement from the game, the whole world comes together to congratulate him on the most astonishing career.

Cricket fraternity takes to Twitter

Fans, too, expressed their love for the “Yorker King”

We can safely say that the shoes he has left behind are too massive to be filled. Even as years pass and we revisit Malinga’s games, his yorkers will draw admiration, his run-up with this bouncing hair will give us a rush of adrenaline, and the “MA-LIN-GAAA MA-LIN-GAA” chants will echo in our ears forever.