Arnold made his Test debut against Pakistan in 1997 and his One day international debut against South Africa later in the year. Originally an opening batsmen, Arnold has since moved down the batting order. He is most famous in the pearl island as a utility and very versatile player, making him ideally suitable for the limited over version of the game. However, when he started his career, he was seen primarily as a solid top order batsmen where he impressed against Australia during the AIWA cup of 1999, as well as the subsequent Test series against them, where he batted at No. 3. Failure in the 2003 Cricket World Cup saw him sidelined for many months. However, he fought his way back into the side with a string of good scores in domestic cricket for his club, Nondescripts. A calm and cool player in a crisis situation, Arnold has dragged Sri Lanka out of many sticky situations. He is highly valued for his gritty qualities and is considered an unselfish team man. He is considered an ideal No. 6; he is a Methodist Christian of Tamil descent as is Muttiah Muralitharan.

Nicknamed "Rusty" by Roshan Mahanama and Pramodya Wickramasinghe, due to it being a very common nickname for the name Russel, and also it complemented his batting style as tough and durable- though not really pretty. His late cut shot is admired by many critics at that time where he used the shot so often to spin bowling.

During a match against India at Sharjah, Arnold helped Sanath Jayasuriya to post his highest individual score of 189. Sanath and Arnold had a good partnership until Sanath stumped after a brilliant 189.

He along with Sajeewa de Silva set the record for the highest 10th wicket stand for Sri Lanka in ODI history(51)

During April 2007 he announced, through team manager Michael Tissera, that he intended to retire from international cricket after the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup final, which came as a shock to Sri Lankan cricket. He cited the pressure of too much travel as his reason.

After retirement, he played A-grade cricket in Sydney for Hornsby District Cricket Club and has also played numerous games for the Melbourne Super Kings in Melbourne. He also coached at Barker College, a prestigious private school in Sydney's north.

Arnold is now a popular television commentator and also writes a weekly Q+A column on Island Cricket.^[5] Russel also keeps his fans entertained using his iPhone app 'Ask Rusty' launched in 2012. It was launched in 2012 along with the T20 World cup. The iPhone app allows Russel's fans to ask questions directly from Russel Arnold. In addition, it consists of feeds of Russel's match predictions where the user can actively participate in voting. He is known for his commentary which covers all aspects of the game except those that concern the proceedings on the ground.

On 1 December 2016, Arnold won the Dialog Sri Lanka Cricket awards for the International Commentator of the year 2015.^[6]

Test cricket

• Debut: 1st Test, Sri Lanka vs. Pakistan, Colombo, April 1997.
• Highest score: 123 vs. Pakistan, Lahore, March 1999.

One-day cricket

• Debut: Sri Lanka vs. South Africa, Lahore, November 1997.
• Highest score: 103 vs. Zimbabwe, Bulawayo, December 1999.