Sport - Cricket

A dignified hero

KANDY: Nothing happens quickly in Sri Lanka as anyone who has driven from Colombo to Kandy will tell you so perhaps it was symbolic that we had to wait almost two hours for the wicket that puts Muttiah Muralitharan at the top of the bowling stats for the rest of time. When it came it was well worth the wait.

He had worked like a Trojan, shown us all the tricks from his magic box in a bid to find the ball that would whisk him past Shane Warne’s record of 708 victims. But, for whatever reason — his own anxiety, the professional skill of the England pair of Paul Collingwood, a proper batsman with a Test double hundred and Ryan Sidebottom who has played ten years for a single fifty and a pitch gone dead — that record ball would not come.

Eventually, just to break the routine Mahela Jayawardene reached for the new ball, but in eight overs Murali was back and his fourth ball was a beauty which disposed off Collingwood for 45 off 121 balls, the figures of a batsman whose fighting spirit outstrips his considerable ability.

The ball was still new, the delivery tempting of flight, zipping off the pitch and slipping past the Collingwood guard to hit the top of middle. I am a proud man today, said Murali who also claimed the ball was a wrong ’un which went the opposite way compared with his intentions. Now he knows how so many batsmen have felt.

I am one of those who argues that Murali never bowls a legitimate ball but I admire enormously his skill, the way he works batsmen out and the strength of character that has allowed him to shrug off the boos and catcalls of lesser — mostly Australian men — as he has crawled to the top of the tree.

He is a pop hero on this lovely island, a fact demonstrated by the schoolgirls who danced for an eternity as our own daughters might have once done to see Elvis Presley.

I am a proud man today, Murali said as he learned of plans to present him with a car worth millions of local rupees and saw a special issue of stamps with his image.

He has advantages — a rich manufacturer as a father, married to a lady from a wealthy Chennai family and a good education — but he is so kind to younger players, such a joker in the dressing room that he is the most popular player in the team.

His wicketkeeper Kumar Sangakkara has painted a picture of a nervous cricketer even after 116 Tests and tellingly claims it took him a year before he could detect his numerous changes in delivery even though he had Murali’s help.

I saw Brian Lara break Gary Sobers’s world record with 375 and the contrast was vivid. In Antigua we had a 20 minute break, hugs from Sobers, and a crowd invasion.

Here the locals cheered lustily as the fireworks went off and then sat down to enjoy the rest of the game.

That symbolises Murali too; quietly competitive as a cricketer, dignified as a hero. Just what his watching parents would have wanted.

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