M Fleming: Talking Cricket - Muralitharan (5 Sep 1998)

5 September 1998

Talking Cricket

By Matthew Fleming

WHILE the Sri Lankan team make the most of their well-earned three days' rest in Colombo before taking their own particular brand of cricket to the Commonwealth Games in Malaysia, we are left lamenting their departure. If the art of entertainment is to leave the spectators keen for more, then the Sri Lankans have mastered it.

Many people thought the calypso cricket of the Seventies and early Eighties could never be matched for sheer enjoyment and brilliance, but this Sri Lankan team, though more subtle in certain aspects, play a similar brand of utterly instinctive cricket. It is rare indeed that when England are beaten in a Test, we do not immediately turn on our team to highlight supposed shortcomings as reasons for defeat. Rightly, people have appreciated the Sri Lankans' wonderful performance. We were beaten, we did not lose.

My first real experience of Sri Lankan cricket, or rather cricketers, was in the spring of 1995. Kent, boldly, and according to some, unwisely, signed Aravinda de Silva as their overseas professional. He arrived in Canterbury for our pre-season training complete with an absurdly inadequate selection of flimsy shirts, several bats and a companion. We assumed that Aravinda's friend was with him to act as his 'Man Friday'.

It was on about their third day that Aravinda quietly asked if his friend could bowl in the nets. Of course, was the obvious reply, as batsmen are always keen for more cannon fodder at that stage of the season. Murali, as we had been told to call him, though as we hadn't quite grasped Aravinda's accent at that stage we were not entirely sure that we had got it right, failed to pitch his first delivery on the cut bit.

This isn't that uncommon, as anyone who has tried to bowl their first ball of the season in early April wearing enough clothes to embarrass an Eskimo will tell you. What happened when it landed, however, was marginally unusual. It turned a prodigious distance and utterly bamboozled the batsman.

So it was that the Kent players were privileged enough to face Muttiah Muralitharan during most of those pre-season preparations. It was immediately obvious that he was something extraordinary. Just how extraordinary I had no real idea until the Oval Test.

Over the last couple of years he has been Sri Lanka's leading wicket-taker but I naively assumed he would find the English wickets less suitable than the more 'spin-friendly' wickets of the subcontinent. How wrong I was.

I had not appreciated the full extent of his skill. He bowls marathon spells and maintains incredible levels of concentration. He bowls very few bad balls, yet has great variation of pace and manages to keep attacking fields without ever giving the batsman an easy scoring area. Most importantly, he spins the ball amazing distances and, what's more, he can do it both ways.

I actually faced the last balls bowled by the Sri Lankans on this tour while playing for Sir Paul Getty's XI. Having seen a lot of the Test, I thought I had worked out the best way to play Murali. I took an off-stump guard and was going to sweep if it was full and push him into the midwicket gap if it was short of a length. The first ball was short of a length so I went back, as planned, to nudge it into the on side for an easy single. The ball had as much top-spin as off-spin, zipped off the wicket and defeated my frenzied jab to hit me mid-shin in front of off stump.

Fortunately for me, the Sri Lankans do play with a smile and the wicketkeeper, slip and bowler were laughing so much they couldn't appeal. It wouldn't have done them any good, anyway, as Dickie Bird was umpiring! Tea and the ensuing rain saved any further humiliation. Spectators at the Commonwealth Games are in for a real treat.

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