Adding to his twin strengths of batting and keeping, Kumar is blessed with another set of twins.

A baby boy and girl on the first of July 2009. We shall delve into the wheels that make the man click on this happy occasion. The seeds of Kumar’s cricketing prowess was sown in the salubrious climes of Asgiriya, Kandy, where his natural restlessness was happily for cricket converted to competitiveness. Kumar could have easily pursued a career in law or else if he turned his hand to tennis like his renowned sister, who knows? He has both the capacity, passion and the requisite grey matter to have excelled at whatever. Kumar fortunately plumped for fun in the sun as against the staid dreariness of the courtroom.

Thanks Kumar, for this was an era when there was little money in the game. It was an era where there was more politics in cricket, than in politics itself.

And sure the guy has marbles. Kumar's answer to the boisterous histrionics of the ‘ugly’ Aussies was to return the compliment with a good measure of sledging from around the back of the stumps. No, he did not spare his tongue. It was a manifestation of his competitive spirit. He simply shouldered arms to the brickbats that followed his sledging allegations and attacked his detractors with his bat and his brains and his ample oratory skills.

Kumar follows in the fine tradition of Nondescripts CC stumpers such as Dr. H. I. K. Fernando and Ranjit Fernando et al and all three of them are such fine gentleman and human beings.

His hand shake is a knuckle crusher. I will vouch for that. This I discovered when I managed the Seylan Bank cricket team of which Kumar was a member. Kumar, I also observed carried no arrogance, though sure he marked his territory, which may sometimes be misconstrued as arrogance and is usually pounced on by envious detractors.

What pleased me most was the fact that he revealed to this writer that he loved reading biographies of cricketers of yore such as C. B Fry and Frank Wooley, turn of the century stuff, in these times when the current crop of players rubbish the ex-artistes.

How charming Kumar. I have no doubt that the Frys and Wooleys must be showering their blessings on you from on high and good luck with the infants.

I wish them a tiny bit of their famous dad’s panache for now.