Murali: A triumph over adversity

The morning after Muttiah Muralitharan spun England to a comprehensive defeat at Trent Bridge, the daily newspapers in the UK were full of praise for the Sri Lankans while expressing concern at England’s complete failure to come to press home advantages they had in all three Tests. The only solace for Duncan Fletcher was that unlike last summer, when cricket relegated football to the inside pages, the impending World Cup means that news of England’s gloom remains buried deep inside most papers.

The best summary of Muralitharan comes in The Guardian, which takes the unusual step of devoting part of its main editorial to praising the man and his wider achievements.

"For a lesson in how to triumph over adversity, the world of sport has provided few finer examples than Sri Lanka's priceless cricketer Muttiah Muralitharan. No player has been more scrutinised and microscopically examined than Murali, nor so carelessly disparaged, the victim of what politicians call spin of different sort. In any other profession, Muralitharan's ability to rise above the disability of an elbow that cannot entirely straighten would have been cause for praise. In cricket, instead, it has brought repeated allegations that his action is illegal, forcing him to undergo repeated biomechanic tests to prove his innocence. Those who care to study the findings of those tests can only accept that what they see is largely the result of an optical illusion."

And those views are echoed elsewhere in the same paper by David Hopps:

"The triumph of Murali has been a triumph of acceptance. The genius once condemned by so many as a blight on the game is now generously acclaimed by the majority as a unique bowler of the age. Where once there was cynicism, now there is admiration; where once there was condemnation, pleasure now reigns."

Geoff Boycott in The Daily Telegraph said England’s problem lay with the bowlers:

“People may wonder how we found it so easy last summer to deal with the Australian tail, especially when the Aussie bowlers had a couple of top players like Adam Gilchrist and Simon Katich to bat around. But the difference was that England were getting the old ball to reverse swing. In this series, they haven't got it reversing at all.”

In The Independent, Angus Fraser rued a series that had started full of hope but which had ended in a defeat:

"That self-belief has slowly been eroded by the helicopter wrist and the subtle variations of Muralitharan. Drawing a home series against Sri Lanka in May and June, in conditions that suit your style of play and are generally alien to your opponents, is extremely disappointing. At full strength England are capable of competing with the best in the world, but the chances of the team that won here in 2005 ever playing together again are now looking very remote."

The tabloids muster little enthusiasm, with their editorial resource at full stretch covering their two obsessions – the World Cup and Big Brother – but after praising Sri Lanka, John Etheridge in The Sun does raise the issue of the pitch:

“The England hierarchy will certainly ask why the Nottinghamshire groundsman prepared a pitch that was tailor-made for Murali. The ball turned sharply and the bounce was so uneven that some deliveries kicked waist-high while others hit footholes and scurried through six inches off the ground."

Mike Walters in The Mirror managed to kill two birds with one stone, working football into his cricket summary:

“On the day Sven's lot flew out to Germany, drawing 1-1 with Sri Lanka - who usually suffer from travel sickness at Colombo airport - was a desperately disappointing way for England's cricketers to sign off, with torrential football forecast for the next month."

The last curmudgeonly word goes to Michael Henderson in The Times. Henderson is a man never frightened to tread where others won’t or to indulge in some pot stirring.

“One man, it is said, cannot make a team, but now and again one man does. Without Diego Maradona, Argentina would not have got beyond the quarter-final stage of the 1986 World Cup. With him they won it, square if not always fair. Yesterday’s fizz-bang events by the Trent confirmed that, without Muttiah Muralitharan, Sri Lanka’s cricketers might struggle to master the owl and the pussycat if they played all week by the light of a silvery moon.”

And if that was not enough to ensure that the article wouldn’t be syndicated throughout Sri Lanka, he poked an ever bigger stick into the hornet’s nest:

“As the ICC has failed to outlaw chuckers, preferring to indulge bowlers with disreputable actions instead of backing those umpires who have shown the gumption to live by their code of honour, “without fear or favour”, there is going to be plenty of dodgy bowling in years to come. Anybody who has watched cricket in the subcontinent will have seen that many youngsters have bowling actions in desperate need of amendment. But if the ICC says, “carry on chucking”, carry on they jolly well will.”