He was born in Polgahawela and moved to Demetagoda when he was 6 years old as his father was in the Sri Lankan Railways. There were lot of kids playing cricket in the housing scheme and that’s where he learnt his cricket, from there emerged a lot of famous cricketers and some of them were Amitha de Costa who opened batting for Sri Lanka,Rajiv Benedict the famous left arm bowler from St. Joseph’s, Kingsley Nallathamby a former badminton champion was another player he mentioned.
He played school cricket in the mid seventies, as is the case with highly talented cricketers; he went up the ladder without a hitch. Fairly Dalpathado and Laddy Outschoorn showed him the rudiments of cricket. The latter showed him the bat drills which helped Dushan in a big way. He noted that everything in life is a drill in itself and rightly so. “Cricket is a great leveller in your personality and cricket taught him that tomorrow was always another day.”
In 1974 he played for St. Joseph’s under Gary Melder and they were the champions. The following year he captained St Josephs and became the 50 over champions.To his embarrassment he was given the captaincy again in the following year and had to disappoint his “ stylish opening bat” Rohan Wijesinghe an opportunity to lead his school.(By the way Rohan charming as ever was a brilliant batsman and an accomplished writer.). In both years he covered himself with glory when he led the Joes to win the 50 over school tournaments and became island wide champions. In 1975 he played for Sri Lanka under 19 against Pakistan under 19, that team was captained by late Anura Ranasinghe, the Pakistanis were captained by Javed Miandad,and they had 4 or 5 players playing Test Cricket including Mudassar Nassar and Qasim Omar. In 1976 he was appointed as the captain of the Sri Lanka under 19 team,and in that team there were several future Sri Lankan players including Sidat Wettimuny, Ranjan Madugalle, late Guy De Alwis,Yohan Goonesekera, Saliya Ahangama etc.A fact to be noted was there were 4 bowlers who were the best in the under 19 category from St. Thomas’s College SaliyaAhangama, IshakShahabdeen, Lalith Ratnayake, Ajith Ganeshan and the Joes met them in the Semi Finals of the Exide Trophy and emerged victorious in one of the best games of cricket seen at that time.
The Thomians were led by Sashi Ganeshan. In the same year, the invincible Joes created another milestone when an exhibition match Joes Vs Combined Schools was played.
Dushan’s school batting average of near 70.0 is worthy of mention. Whilst still at school he played premier division cricket for NCC a team captained by Michael Tissera and comprising a galaxy of national players.
After his brilliant school career Dushan left the shores of Sri Lanka and entered Reading University UK and enrolled for a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. A unique thing happened in his second year at Uni, he was selected to captain their cricket team and was the only Asian to do that.
Armed with a degree, and having worked a few years in London, his urge to serve his mother country, made him return and played for Tamil Union for several seasons in the premier league. In and around year 2000 he made a unique proposal to Sri Lanka Cricket where he got the nod from its then President Thilanga Sumathipala to set up a high performance training centre. His proposal was based on a Hawk Eye tracking system and creating a measurement for training in cricket a unique concept commented Dushan. Hawk Eye was then in its development stages and Dushan mastered it four years before it became a commercial product. Unfortunately none of this saw the light of day as the then President of SLC was removed and an Interim Committee took over. Dushan was of the opinion had the centre been implemented then, it would have still been a state-of- the art in the current environment.
Dushan’s track record in a nutshell in the corporate world is as follows;
Managing Director
BPM ONE (PVT) LTD – a consulting firm
July 2016 – Present3 years 5 months
Non Executive Director
Softlogic Finance PLC
2011 – Present 8 years
Sri Lanka
At Softlogic Finance he has been on the board for 8 years He also functions as the Chairman of IT and Risk Steering Committees and served on their Audit committee.
District Govenor 2018/19 for Rotary in Sri Lanka& Maldives
Rotary Sri Lanka
1985 – Present34 years
Sri Lanka Board and other Positions Held
2005 – 2017 years
Sri Lanka Export Development Board
Consumer Affairs Authority
Founder Board Member of SLASSCOM
Sri Lanka Cricket Technical Committee member
Managing Director WNS Global Services Sri Lanka
2002 – 2016 (14 years)
Sri Lanka
Set up WNS Sri Lanka ( a leading BPO/BPM company ) in 2004 from inception and operated as its MD till the mid 2016. In the process grew the company from just 5 initial pilot batch to circa 900+ staff.
Pioneered the offshoring concept for high end services in F&A , Legal Services and Knowledge Services in Sri Lanka and made many breakthroughs. WNS SL was operated as the most exciting location in the WNS world of 30,000+ employees. Hired over 2,500 F&A professionals ,500 Legal Services and other professional staff in the span of 12 years. Built WNS India’s first state of the art delivery center as Project Director in Mumbai. Set up WNS Philippines Operations centre, was in charge of the Pune (India) Centerforv Legal Services and gave leadership to many initiatves..A prolific speaker in both local and International forums..
With his corporate and professional experience a person of the calibre of Dushan Soza is a real asset to our country and we need people of him to steer the ship through the troubled waters, over to the hire ups to please take note.
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