England are called to arms for bitterest foe (14 May 1999)

14 May 1999

England are called to arms for bitterest foe

Michael Henderson

Every good soldier, they say, retires at night with a picture of his enemy, to know what he is thinking. If Alec Stewart spent last evening studying a portrait of Arjuna Ranatunga it will have been time well spent. England play Sri Lanka at Lord's today in the opening match of the World Cup and the outcome will be resolved in part by the intensely personal battle between the captains.

There will be few pleasantries. These men are implacable foes, which is a polite way of saying they can hardly bear to look at each other, and there will be nothing said at the toss-up beyond the formalities customary for the occasion. Then they will return to their respective dressing rooms and urge their team-mates to rip the other's head off.

Stewart is 36 and belonged to the England team that lost the final to Pakistan in Melbourne seven years ago. This is his third World Cup and his last. He goes into it under pressure, as an opening batsman short of form, leading a team short of zip. He does not even know what his best side is. But he is a proud man and will not yield an inch without a fight.

In Ranatunga, eight months younger, he faces an opponent as resourceful and abrasive as they come. He proved it by leading Sri Lanka to their wonderful triumph in the last competition, which was achieved with only two proper bowlers. "Captain Cool" does not miss a trick and has pulled some stunts in his time, not all of them pretty. He loves a scrap.

There is no way of playing down this mutual loathing, no matter how many honeyed words David Graveney, the England manager, ladled into the bowl of public debate yesterday. In fact it goes a good deal further than that. The England players heartily dislike the Sri Lankans as a bunch and, short of winning the World Cup, few things would please them more than delivering a good old rout today.

For once personal motive and professional necessity go hand in hand. England must win to generate public interest in the event. Lord's will be full, as it always is for big games, but the audience beyond St John's Wood needs convincing that England are serious contenders for a tournament they have never won.

They would not have been encouraged greatly to hear Stewart deliver his pre-match address. Not for him "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers"; there was not even "a little touch of Alec in the night". As England go into the first game of the only one-day competition that really matters, one that most of the players will never sniff again, the captain sounded as if they were jousting for the Marylebone Rose Bowl.

"Every competition we play in is a huge competition," he said, with a banality that boggled the mind. Dear me, what a thin effort. Come on, captain. It is time to wear your heart on your sleeve for jackdaws to peck at. This is the World Cup, which England fought tooth and nail to stage, and all over this disunited kingdom there are people, however erroneously, expecting big things from the host nation. You owe them a bit more than that.

It may be a mark of anxiety that Stewart wants to play things down and it was interesting that David Lloyd, the coach, was not wheeled out yesterday to say a few words: at least he knows one or two. Stewart would not even discuss team selection, other than to say: "We are picking from 15 and will announce the team just before the toss."

Given the unsettled weather and the soft conditions, it is likely that Nasser Hussain will play, either replacing Nick Knight at the top of the order or batting at No 3, with Adam Hollioake 12th man. Alternatively, Hollioake will retain his place, at No 7, at the expense of Hussain. That would be the braver move, for it would give England an additional bowler, but English cricketers tend to think of not losing games before they try to find ways of winning them.

Whether England like it or not, and plainly they don't, the memories are still fresh of the one-day match between the teams in Adelaide earlier this year. That was the day when Muttiah Muralitharan, the Sri Lankan finger spinner, was no-balled for throwing, and Ranatunga threatened to lead his players from the field in protest, going so far as to tell Ross Emerson, the umpire who called Murali: "I'm in charge here."

England eventually lost an ill-tempered game of more than 600 runs because they let the Sri Lankans rile them. Stewart was picked up on the stump microphone telling Ranatunga that his behaviour had been disgraceful. He also barged into Roshan Mahanama at the end of an over, as the game spilled over into lawlessness.

Graveney has warned the England players that the best way of winning this match is by keeping their tempers in check. "One of the reasons we lost in Adelaide," he said, "apart from the magnificent batting of the Sri Lankans, was that the players did not control themselves."

Ranatunga, obviously, preferred to take a different view of events on that sad day."A lot of the truth about what happened in Adelaide did not come out," he said. "I will tell it one day but you will have to wait six months." He is unlikely to ask Stewart to write the foreword to his book.

Sri Lanka's century-maker in Adelaide is not playing. Mahela Jayawardene looked a superb batsman that day but he makes way for Aravinda de Silva, the hero of the World Cup final in Lahore three years ago, and long established as one of the world's finest strokemakers.

If England live up to their captain's precept, "to go out there and play in their natural way", they should prevail. Sri Lanka are clearly not the force they were and England are playing at Lord's. They simply have to win. If they do not, their involvement in the competition will hang by the most slender of threads.

England (probable): A J Stewart (capt), N V Knight, N Hussain, G A Hick, G P Thorpe, N H Fairbrother, A Flintoff, M A Ealham, D Gough, I D Austin, A D Mullally.

Sri Lanka (probable): S T Jayasuriya, R S Kaluwitharana, R Mahanama, M S Atapattu, P A de Silva, A Ranatunga (capt), H P Tillekeratne, K E A Upashantha, W P U C Vaas, G P Wickremasinghe, M Muralitharan.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)