Harsha Bhogle: Cry havoc! (Jayasuriya profile) (5 Sep 1996)

5 Sep 1996

Cry havoc!

Harsha Bhogle

The debate must go on. It`s just the characters who keep changing. Was it Sunil Gavaskar? Or Viv Richards? Or Greg Chappell? Or even Barry Richards, a batsman that half the debators had never seen? Wonderful stimulation for the mind on a lazy afternoon, isn`t it, to think of who the best batsman in the world is?

They`ve been talking of Tendulkar and Lara for more than two years now. And when Mark Waugh produces one of his truly sublime innings, he enters that elite group to form a trinity. Waugh, Tendulkar and Lara.... I wouldn`t mind watching cricket for the rest of my life. Which is what I hope to be doing anyway!

But funnily, the one question that coaches and bowlers around the world are asking doesn`t involve either Waugh, Tendulkar or Lara. It involves a small, dark and balding man who, if you saw him strolling on the beach, would hardly generate the picture of the fiercest hitter in the game.

I know there has been some talk about overdoing Jayasuriya. The purists seem to look upon him as a passing fancy. One of the reasons for that, and it is a very good reason, is that they don`t have to bowl to him. To be honest, for a while I looked upon Jayasuriya, in his role as opening batsman, as a slogger who would get sorted out in this ruthless and cerebral world of cricket. When the Audi panel named him player of the tournament in the Wills World Cup, I thought ah... well... they probably wanted to give it to a Sri Lankan.

I realised, of course, that he had made a great impact on the World Cup and had turned a quarter final and a semi-final around; one with the bat and the other with the ball. But I still believed that both Waugh and Tendulkar had exhibited pedigree that put them in a different category from anyone else in the tournament. Waugh`s hundreds against India and, in particular, against New Zealand were gems and I thought he deserved it more.

But well, Jayasuriya just kept slogging away. Or so everyone thought. In reality, this was a brilliant example of a razorsharp cricket brain at work. Light on his feet, Jayasuriya realised he could swivel and pull anything that was marginally short. The secret was to hit the ball really hard; so hard that a mishit could carry well beyond 30 yards. If the ball was pitched up, it made life that much easier because he could just hit through the line. But there was one aspect of his batting that stumped early observers and that was the margin of error he allowed bowlers.

With the wide rule compelling bowlers to attack off stump, Jayasuriya began employing the scoop-drive over point. Henry Blofeld used to love describing that shot as "another scoop of ice cream". Jayasuriya scooped enough to set up his own retail counter! The only way to prevent him from playing that shot was to bowl absolutely straight and sometimes to have a third man and deep point.

The moment Jayasuriya saw that, however, he was ready to swivel and pick the ball over square leg. It is a shot he plays brilliantly, and shows how well he understands a situation. Invariably, captains had to resort to a long leg and a third man because two men behind square on the leg side was out of question. The moment that kind of field was set, the bowler was in line for a wide.

So how does one stop Jayasuriya? Various theories have been put forward, some have been experimented with and at the moment, I suspect bowlers are waiting for the oldest mode of dismissal in the game; wait till a batsman gets himself out.

The theory the Indians had worked out, and believed could be successful till last week`s onslaught put that thought out of their heads, was to cramp him with a succession of incoming balls. I have seen that theory work against Srikkanth, when bowlers just didn`t allow him to get onto the front foot and open his shoulders. The Indians thought, and so did the Australians, that a square third man was most likely to pick up the frustrated slash that would invariably follow.

One theory I heard recently suggested was that a fast bowler angle a ball across him from over the wicket at high speed, and try to produce a snick for wicket keeper, two slips and a gully to gobble. Easier said, I suspec,t because we have seen, both on sub-contientnal wickets and those in Australia, that the faster a bowler bowls, the faster it seems to disappear off the face of the bat. And Jayasuriya is such a brilliant timer of the ball that even a little push to mid off or mid on could, using the speed of the ball, carry to the boundary.

Then there is the theory of the fast off break bowler bowling just short of a good length on leg and middle and turning the ball enough to make the heave over mid wicket a dangerous shot. One major problem with that theory is the number of bowlers in the world today who are capabhle of bowling like that. Kumara Dharamsena of Sri Lanka is probaly the best in that category, but he plays for the same side!

Pakistan tried Saqlain Mushtaq, but the brilliant young offspinner is a little too orthodox and tends to throw the ball in the air. The tossed up ball would seem to be the easiest to clobber, and certainly Jayasuriya showed that against Richard Illingworth of England. How is that for a theory? A gentle left arm spinner against a left hander who can play him with the turn? It was one of the most inexplicable events of the World Cup!

The theory that I believe could have most potential involves a medium-paced swing bowler who holds the ball in the air and pitches it just short of a driving length. At reduced pace, such a bowler probably lays himself open to the lofted drive but it is in inducing that shot that his best chance lies, because the swing would then produce either the edge or the mishit.

Australia tried, I suspect, to do something like this when they opened with Steve Waugh and Stuart Law. 44 runs from 28 balls and an innings ended only by an amazing catch wouldn`t suggest a victory! But then, neither bowler is the best pratictioner of that art.

Most swing bowlers hate bowling to left handers because their big outswinger comes confortably into the batsman. I would venture to say that had Jayasuriya, with all his great cricketing skills, been a right hander, he would have struggled to score as consistently as he is scoring now. Witness the reduced frequency with which Kaluwitharana scores. In Australia, he had seemed the superior batsman, but he struggles more than Jayasuriya does because I suspect he does not have as cool a mind and because bowlers traditionally bowl better o right handers. The number of successful case studies against right handers in a bowler`s mind far outnumber those against left handers. In a sense, most bowlers know, instinctively and through training, about how to react against right handers because they have probably bowled at least twenty times as many balls to them as they have to left handers.

The one bowler in the world I would like to see Jayasuriya up against is Curtly Ambrose. As Dennis Lillee says, Ambrose was born to bowl fast. He has a fantastic temperament, is really mean and bowls a fabulous length. In the limited over game today, Ambrose against Jayasuriya (closely followed by Warne against Tendulkar) is the contest I would give anything to see. Sri Lanka tour the West Indies this summer and already, I am itching to see that one.

And if you thought Jayasuriya was a nightmare only for bowlers and captains, you haven`t met the community that hates him the most - television cameramen. In England this year, I was speaking to an experienced cameraman who had covered the tournament in Singapore. "We tried following the ball like we normally do but with this guy, it was impossible. It would fly off the bat and you just didn`t know where it was. Very often, we follow a ball by instinct - but this guy is just too quick. I have never seen a ball take a shorter time to reach the boundary. Within about half an hour the director had abandoned all plans of following the ball. `Give me the shot and the boundary line, just forget about the rest` - he said. Believe me man, Jayasuriya is a cameraman`s worst nightmare!"

So, are we going overboard over Jayasuriya? I don`t think so. Very very few people redefine the way a game is played. Sanath Jayasuriya has.

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