Harsha Bhogle: The smiling assassin (Sep 2 1996)

It is not too difficult to see why, if Sanath Jayasuriya had not been a cricketer, he would have been an accomplished fencer - sallying forth towards his opponent, like he does when he dances down the wicket, with nimbleness of foot and

02-Sep-1996

2 Sep 1996

The smiling assassin

Harsha Bhogle

You can visualise the epee twirling dexterously in his quick hands and sense the swordman`s acceptance of having his life hang by a string. The qualities of skill and daring form a rate combination, perhaps suited more to a gambler than a top order batsman and yet, to see Jayasuriya bat is to see a finely crafted gambler at work; sensing an opportunity and thriving on it.

Over the last sixteen months, Jayasuriya has made the leap that so many cricketers aspire to but rarely can achieve; from being an exciting scene-stealer to playing the lead role. Even before that, you could sense something was going to happen when he walked out to bat, but you could be sure there would be just a few flashes of lighting.

The promise of a storm, without the dense cloud to back it.

Though he was talked about as a one-day specialist then, he only had a batting average of about thirteen and certainly didn`t have enough wickets to justify his presence as a bowler even though he held the best bowling figures by a Sri Lankan in one-day cricket. It was tempting to label Jayasuriya as someone who could neither bat nor bowl well enough. Or at any rate, consistently enough.

Unlike men of destiny who make their future, Jayasurya seemed to wait for fortune to stop by. As any sportsman will tell you, it only happens rarely and while he waited, crucial years of youth passed by, taking away opportunity and a fair chunk of hair. Then suddenly, the wheel of fortune stopped alongside him. At Bloemfontein, the heart of right-wing Afrikaaner territory, Jayasuriya first rode the crest of a new revolution. Opening the batting against New Zealand, he scored 140, his first limited overs century.

It also made him the record holder for the highest individual score in a one-day international by a Sri Lankan, and while that didn`t make him a great batsman overnight, it meant that he was up above such outstanding talents as Roy Dias and Aravinda d`Silva. A wanderer in search of home had found it; at the top of the order.

In the next few months, Jayasuriya waded into opposition attacks not with the fluency of the swordsman but with the bluntness of a battle tank. The guns boomed for a while, but he was also an easy target and the opposition waited for him to shoot himself. Invariably he did.

Until the tour of Australia late last year, that is. On the bouncy tracks that had exposed so many before him, Jayasuriya discovered that he loved the ball coming onto him. Better sitll, he relished the challenge of aggressive cricketers and hostile officials, and his century in the last Test at Perth was a won- derul innings studded with bold shots and marked by a refreshing absence of orthodoxy.

Too often, batsmen tend to be predictable, playing a ball as the manual suggests. Bowlers don`t mind bowling to such batsmen because they can work out the best way to attack them. But here was a batsman who believed strokes were meant to be played even in the Test match theatre, and who was just as much at home driving through cover on the rise as he was pulling in front of square. He had begun to like fast bowlers, and they had started discover- ing a distaste for him. Subtly, quite unlike the manner in which he plays his cricket, the balance was tilting.

And then came the World Cup. And Delhi. And the more perceptive realised that something new and drastic was coming their way. Jayasuriya made 79 from 76 balls, a pedestrian pace by recent standards - but his partnership with Kaluwitharana had redefined the way the early overs would be played in one-day cricket.

Ironically, their batting averages only added up to around 35, the figure you would want a good top order batsman to have.

With batting records falling like rain in a Bombay monsoon, Jayasuriya took on England, a side whose defeats bring a totally inexplicable but perverse joy to most cricket playing countries. His 82 from 43 balls brought him instant international attention, for he was now playing innings that were long enough to win matches on their own.

And then came the crucial spell at Calcutta that destroyed India and showed up the Eden Gardens as just another fair weather crowd. That was one of the outstanding bowling performances of the tournament, because he bowled the perfect line on a helpful wicket; the sign of a shrewd, thinking cricketer.

The World Cup made him a star - but there were many, including me, who remained a bit sceptical of the Player of the Tournament award. Did he have the substance, one wondered, to win it ahead of Tendulkar or Waugh? Did he have the statesmanship to play the kind of inings Mark Waugh played at Madras: surely one of the great innings of limited overs cricket? Did he evoke the same awe as those two?

If the end of the World Cup, a stunning success for him, still evoked an uncertain response, the picturesque Padang in Singapore provided convincing proof. A century from 48 balls against one of the best attacks in the world had to be something special, irrespective of the length of the boundary. The world record had gone by fourteen balls; a bit like a young upstart coming up and doing seven metres against Sergei Bubka.

Jayasuriya is now writing a new chapter in the short history of the one-day game,perfecting a style that is radically different from anything that has come before; a lot more revolutionary than Martin Crowe`s use of Dipak Patel with the new ball in the 1992 World Cup. There is now a new grammar to cricket, for underneath this carnage lies a definite pattern.

Even as the fastest fifty appears in the record books, what is most awesome is not the power behind the shots but the sense of predictability around the obvious danger of his approach. That is because he picks his spot to hit, sees the ball very early and has the divine ability to find spaces rather than fielders.

As he drives his Audi down past Galle on the road to Matara, Jayasuriya will be aware, being a shrewd cricketer, that cricketing brains around the world will be working on how to stop him. At 26, that is a great reputation to have.

If I was Jayasuriya, I`d turn the music on and watch the beautiful palms of Sri Lanka.

Our Correspondent adds:

Sanath Jayasuriya, cricket`s hardest hitting batsman, has one ambition: to trounce Australia and let his bat do the talking when the two squads meet on Friday in the Singer Cup competition.

Jayasuriya, 27, already holds the world record for the fastest one day half century, made on April 7 this year in Singapore when he hammered 53 off 17 balls, going on to make 76 off 28 balls with five sixes and eight fours.

The left-hander also made the fastest century in one-day cricket on April two in Singapore, when he reached his 100 off 48 balls to eclipse former India skipper Mohammad Azharuddin`s 100 in 62 deliveries.

Jayasuriya`s record-breaking spree has also brought the most runs scored in one over - 30, against Pakistan in Singapore in April.

In that same innings, he also cleared the fence 11 times, the highest number of sixes hit by a batsman in a one-day game.

Interestingly, Jayasuriya is not from the traiditional Lankan cricketing crucible of Colombo, but from a fishing village near Matara in southern Sri Lanka.

His father is a government health inspector who ears Rs 10,000 (200 dollars) a month. Jayasuriya did not go to university but, after completing high school, came to Colombo in 1989 to work as an insurance agent at a starting salary of Rs 3,000 ($60) per month.

The same year, he travelled to Pakistan with a Sri Lanka B team, and scored two successive hundreds in unofficial Tests. From 1990 until the end of the 1996 World Cup, he worked as a welfare off- icer in a sewing machine company. His performance in the World Cup earlier this year, when he was named Player of the Tournament, won him a management position in the company.

It is Jayasuriya who will lead Sri Lanka`s assault against Australia, notwithstanding a severe leg cramp that saw him hobble off the field after leading the winning charge against India at the Premadasa Stadium on Wednesday.

"He will be fit to play, come what may," said Lankan skipper Arjuna Ranatunga.

And addicts of the Lankan southpaw`s explosive batting style will be keeping their fingers crossed, hoping for the trademark pyrotechnics...

Source :: Rediffusion on the Net (https://www.redifindia.com/)