Separamadu Lasith Malinga is a Sri Lankan former cricketer who is widely regarded as one of the greatest Sri Lankan limited overs bowlers of all time. Playing as a right-arm fast bowler, Malinga was commonly used as a specialist death bowler, and captained the Sri Lanka national cricket team to the 2014 T20 World Cup title. He was nicknamed "Slinga Malinga" due to his distinctive round-arm action, sometimes referred to as a sling action. Malinga announced his retirement from all forms of cricket on 14 September 2021 and migrated to Melbourne.

The 2014 ICC World Twenty20 was the fifth ICC World Twenty20 competition, an international Twenty20 cricket tournament, that took place in Bangladesh from 16 March to 6 April 2014. It was played in three cities — Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet. The International Cricket Council announced Bangladesh as host in 2010. This was the first ICC World Twenty20 where the use of Decision Review System (DRS) was implemented. It was the second consecutive time that an Asian country hosted the event, with Sri Lanka hosting the previous tournament in 2012. Sri Lanka won the 2014 tournament, beating India by 6 wickets in the final at Mirpur.