Arjuna Ranatunga is the son of Reggie Padmasena Rantunga, the third Governor of Sabaragamuwa, serving between June 2005 and February 2008. He has five siblings; cricketer Sanjeeva Ranatunga, along with Dammika Ranatunga, Nishantha Ranatunga, Prasanna Ranatunga, and Ruwan Ranatunga. He was born on 1 December 1963 in Gampaha near Colombo. He has a son Dhyan Ranatunga who is also a cricketer.

Ranatunga went on to captain the Sri Lanka national cricket team in 1988, taking control of it for the next 11 years, transforming it from a weak, routinely defeated team into a competitive and successful unit. He led the team to win the 1996 World Cup. His innovative captaincy took a Sri Lanka team, given little chance prior to the competition, for cricket’s greatest prize. His strategies were commended by many cricketing greats and followed by their teams. He was the brain behind the strategy of scoring as many runs as possible in the first 15 overs of an ODI match in which there are field restrictions. This strategy was still followed by the batsmen in the Powerplays. He was widely recognised as a belligerent leader and was famous for defending his players at all costs regardless of what they did.

Ranatunga lost the national team captaincy in 1999 after Sri Lanka’s poor showing at the World Cup in England, although he was chosen as one of five Wisden Cricketers of the Year for that year.

In June 2000, Ranatunga played in Sri Lanka’s 100th Test match, becoming the only player to represent his country in their first and hundredth Test. He retired from playing cricket in 2001.

He entered into politics by joining the Sri Lanka Freedom Party led by Chandrika Kumaratunga, and contested the 2001 parliamentary elections with PA from Colombo District. After the UPFA victory in 2004, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment Promotion. In 2010, Ranatunga left the UPFA and joined the Democratic Party of the DNA led by Sarath Fonseka, and was made the deputy leader of the Democratic Party. In November 2012, he resigned from the Democratic Party, but continued his affiliation with DNA. He endorsed Maithripala Sirisena in the 2015 Presidential election, and after Sirisena’s victory Ranatunga was appointed Minister of Highways, Ports & Shipping.

“You can’t be mates with everyone,” Warne wrote in his 2008 book Shane Warne’s Century, serialised by The Times in September, “and if there was any way I could knock him down to number 101 for the purposes of this book, I’d be delighted to do so. But having taken on the task, I want to do it seriously, and the fact is that Ranatunga helped to put Sri Lanka on the cricket map. And you know what? Deep down, I’ll quietly admit that I rated him as a cricketer.”