Anjelo Mathews Set for Farewell as Sri Lanka Face Bangladesh in 1st Test at Galle!

On June 17, 2025
- 10:48 am

Anjelo Mathews has called time on his Test career. Sri Lanka’s first Test against Bangladesh, starting in Galle on Tuesday, will be Mathews’ last. Irrespective of his performance in his farewell Test, Mathews will finish as the third-most prolific Sri Lanka batter in Tests, behind Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene. No other batter from the island country has accumulated over 8000 runs in the format.

Mathews’ tally of 119 Tests will also be the fourth-highest for Sri Lanka, after Jayawardene (149), Sangakkara (134) and Muthiah Muralidaran (132).

***He will finish as Sri Lanka’s third-highest run-getter, and their fourth-most capped player in Tests***

At present, Mathews has 4323 runs in Sri Lanka, the third-highest for a Sri Lanka batter, and 3844 runs away from home (including neutral venues), also the third-highest from his country – both only behind Sangakkara and Jayawardene.

Among batters with over 6000 Test runs for Sri Lanka, Mathews has the third-highest proportion of runs away from home (47.07%), only behind Dinesh Chandimal (52.11%) and Aravinda de Silva (48.28%).

Mathews is also among the only three Sri Lanka batters to average over 40 away from home (minimum 1000 runs outside Sri Lanka), and is just behind Sangakkara. Nine of Mathews’ 16 Test centuries came outside Sri Lanka, joint-third-most alongside Aravinda, and only behind Sangakkara (16) and Jayawardene (11).

All four of Mathews’ Player-of-the-Series awards came away from home: against Pakistan in the UAE (2013-14), in England (2014), in Zimbabwe (2020), and in Bangladesh (2022). In 2014, Mathews got 306 runs, including two hundreds, in two Tests on the tour of England, where he led Sri Lanka to their first series win in the country (barring the one-off Test win in 1998).

The retiring Angelo Mathews will be looking to fire from the hip to ending a 16 year Test career with a bang when the veteran of 118 test matches with 16 centuries and 45 half tons and over 8000 runs under his name makes his farewell appearance against Bangladesh on a predictably spin friendly surface at the Galle International Cricket Stadium.