Theirs has been a successful on-field partnership as captain and deputy, and Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara’s rock-solid bonding has helped them become successful business partners too.

The Sri Lankan skipper and his deputy have jointly invested along with the country’s most well-known Master Chef, Darshan Munidasa, to run a restaurant called ‘Ministry of Crabs’, which serves the most mouth-watering preparations of lagoon crabs — supposed to be best in the world.

“I run a chain of Japanese restaurants known as ‘Nihonbashi’ in Colombo and both Kumar and Mahela were regular visitors there. I always wanted to have restaurant where we can serve the exotic crabs as best quality lagoon crabs used to get exported to Singapore.

“Since both Mahela and Kumar are connoisseurs of good food, we became friends. When this project was discussed, both readily agreed to invest,” Darshan, the man who looks after the day-to-day affairs told PTI during an interaction.

“Since both cricketers are busy, I am not able to have board meeting. Three of us are one-third partners in this venture. It’s opened for nine months now and is doing really well,” the co-owner informed.

In fact, Darshan had a funny anecdote to tell about how they decided on who will be the chairman of this project.

“Thank God, neither Mahela nor Kumar was the captain at that time. It was Dilshan, who used to lead so we decided to have a toss between the two. Mahela won the toss and became the chairman. Both, however, call me up and take updates about how the project is doing,” he laughed.

The unique feature of the restaurant is that the price is based on weight of crabs and not the preparation.

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