One one things

After the fun of ‘96, the WC of 1999 was a big disappointment. It was a bad time bc it was smack bang during OL time, and that’s the one exam where everyone gets all excited and works hard, it’s only afterwards that you think, eh that was a bit of a waste of time. I don’t even remember my OL subjects anymore. But from the very first game of the 1999 edition, it just didn’t seem auspicious. It was a gloomy start, it looked cold and just not the party atmosphere world cups should be played in. Anyway, it wasn’t a great world cup at all other than the two Australia vs. South Africa games. Our own team wasn’t in great shape and we played poorly for most of the tournament. I couldn’t watch most of the matches due to study/school commitments, this wasn’t always a bad thing, specially our game against India. I didn’t even watch most of the final, which was fittingly one sided to round off a poor world cup.

2003 was a different matter. I was in uni at the time in England and naturally none of the games were shown on terrestial TV. S and I found an Australian pub near the covered market where they showed all the games live. The pub is called Bar Oz and is still around. The first match SL played was against New Zealand, and Sanath started things off in style with a super 100, holding the innings together with the surprise package that was Hashan Tillekaratne. The crowd at the Oz was small, but the two of us were easily the only Sri Lanka supporters. We then bowled superbly taking early wickets but Styris kept the Kiwis in the hunt all along with a massive hundred. But the spinners kept chipping away at the wickets and the boys produced a typical subcontinental spinner’s strangle even though the game was in south Africa. There was one kiwi supporter who kept chatting with me through the game, we had an enjoyable banter, and it helped that the game was close so we took turns at jabbing one another. The aussies in the Oz got behind NZ as well, but they didn’t really engage me at all, I guess it would have been different had the Aussies been playing. Styris finally fell going for one too many sixers and the game was ours. I didn’t even see our next two games bc they were over before I could make my way down to the Oz. The canada game was over before I woke up. I didn’t see the Kenya game either, damn good thing too.

The next big game was against the Windies. It was a day nighter so it started quite late in the piece. The Oz was quite full with the evening crowd but most ppl weren’t there to watch the cricket. We batted first again and didn’t do a great deal with the bat, Sanath scored again but the nature of the wicket suggested that the 220 odd we got may just be defendable. Vaas swung it all over the shop and we had a host of early wickets, and when Lara went we really were in business. I tend to get a bit dramatic when watching the boys play, when i’m at home i can get away with the big appeals and uninhibited advice on running between the wickets, but its more of an issue in public. With time the ppl at the Oz got used to me getting out of my chair and yelling at the tv, well at least they stopped turning around and staring after the initial surprise. The big moment in the match was when Dilhara nailed Sarwan with a bouncer and jammed his ear-ring against the helmet causing a lot of pain and a bit of blood. Hooper was LBW first ball to a slower one and I felt we had the game in the bag. Annoyingly towards the late middle Sarwan came back to bat, and even more annoyingly the Oz switched to the football. We rushed over to the Teddy JCR and were delighted to see some fellows watching the game. Sarwan was keeping the Windies in the game with some calculated hitting. Just when the game reached its climax some wanker stood up and changed the channel to Neighbours, and everyone else approved of the move. Bloody neutrals. Bloody soap operas and the Brit’s obsession with them. We scurried off to S’s room to catch the last bits on cricinfo. It was a cliff-hanger of a game. Sarwan kept swatting sixers over midwicket off the spinners but he was running out of partners. Murali bowled an amazing penultimate over, and in the end Pulasthi Gunaratne kept it tight enough to win it by 6 in the final over. I was annoyed that we had to resort to following the last 5 overs on cricinfo, but we were through to the next round, and that was what mattered.

The next game against South Africa was one of my most memorable cricket watching experiences. S had an essay so I went up to the Oz alone. I had a tute in the late morning so I rocked up about 20 overs into our innings. When I walked in there were about 3 tables pulled together with ppl using up pretty much all the room around the tables. I desparately looked for a seat and luckily spotted one bang in the middle of the group. Without thinking twice or asking anyone I walked up there, half an eye on the tele and sat myself down. The chaps either side of me looked perplexed. I grinned. It was then that I realised that I was right in the middle of a South African troupe. They were two different groups of supporters, originating from different parts of South Africa, but it was very evident that there was only one person rooting for Sri Lanka at the Oz. Marvan was batting superbly, driving beautifully on the up, cutting and flicking with ease, he looked right at home with the ball coming onto the bat. Aravinda gave him good support with his last big world cup innings. He hooked Makhaya for a great six and then flicked Andrew Hall over midwicket for another and I stood up and cheered like mad, it didn’t matter who was surrounding me. The Saffers were thoroughly amused by me, first they couldn’t pronounce my name so they called me Sri and then Dish. After a couple of attempts at correcting them I shrugged my shoulders and answered to Dish. One of them said that Australians would never have tolerated someone from the other camp sitting amongst them, but that he respects me for having the balls to come right into the lions den to cheer my team. To be honest if I had known it was 3 tables full of saffer supporters I would most probably have pulled a chair from somewhere else and sat down in a corner.

There was some great fun that day, I did my best to stand up to their sledging and I suspect i did a decent job of it. By the time the 2nd innings began the Saffers were quite high and became increasingly vocal. Each boundary by Smith and Gibbs brought about huge cheers, and I felt like a very small voice amongst a sea of springboks. So when Smith mistimed a pull off Aravinda down the throat of deep midwicket, I produced my loudest and most demonstrative cheer of the day. The Saffers continued to bat well but the spinners kept chipping away at the wickets. The South Africans at the Oz became increasingly vociferous as well, they were literally in my face with their support for their team, the smell of beer was strong. I didn’t back down. With each wicket I’d get out of my chair and punch the air and yell something in Sinhalese or English depending on how much I wanted to be understood. When Murali bowled Gibbs on the sweep the game swung towards Sri Lanka. Unfortunately at this point the noise was such that I couldn’t hear Sanga’s legendary sledging of Pollock. “Oh, here comes the skipper, oh the weight of all these expectations, he’s going to let his whole country down if he fails, 42 million ppl depending on you, Shaun!” Boucher kept the flag up, chipping runs as he usually does, but when Pollock was dismissed the guys at the Oz got increasingly antsy. I was told to shut up a couple of times when my cheering became too loud for their liking, but I wasn’t about to oblige. Klusener really struggled in his first few balls and couldn’t get it past the square. That helped Sri Lanka, and with the rains coming nobody really knew what was required. Boucher smashed Murali over midwicket for 6 and punched the air as he jogged to the non-strikers end. He defended the final ball of the over and happily strode away from the wicket as the teams left the field for rain. It was then that the Duckworth Lewis figures came on the screen and it was apparent that South Africa hadn’t done enough to win. Everyone at the Oz was pissed off royally. I knew it was time to shut up. One guy was convinced it was fixed. “I wouldn’t be surprised man if Allan Donald walks up and gives Boucher a hug (after Donald’s cock up in the ‘99 WC semi final), and then Hansie’s ghost comes and starts dancing on the pitch. Fucking joke.” They were really angry so I didn’t want to stay there and celebrate, I quietly left after shaking hands and consoling the fellows immediately next to me.

The super 6’s didn’t go too well for us, we lost to the Aussies and to India before beating Zimbabwe to reach the semis. I only watched the Aussie game, and while we got thrashed it was another fun cricket watching experience. There was no way I was going to the Oz to watch a SL v Aussie game, so instead I headed up to the Jamaican pub up on Cowley Road. It was early morning, 8am, so I was surprised to find them open. I was a bit nervous about going there after Dilhara had felled Sarwan in the previous game, anyway I plucked up my courage and walked in. I spent the whole day there, and the Jamaican owner, a legend in Cowley, was thoroughly welcoming and chatted with me all the time about cricket, about how he moved to Oxford from the West Indies and life in the two contrasting countries, we shared a distaste for Australian cricket, “They abuuuse us mun, them Australians, they always abusing us men of colour. Racism mun, it has no place on that field.” His wife made me some Jerk chicken for lunch and it didn’t even matter that we were being thrashed in the match. S joined me after lunch but by then the game was almost up. Aravinda played some lovely shots and showed that age is no barrier to class. We went down big time, but I left the Jamaican pub thoroughly satisfied with the day. I was in Oxford about a year and a half ago for my graduation, and I tried to go to the Jamaican restaurant one night but it was full, but through the window I saw the owner and we smiled and waved at one another, acknowledging a shared memory.

We played well in the semis, particularly in the field. The batting was undone by some fiery stuff by Brett Lee. He cleaned up Marvan with the fastest ball i’ve ever seen. A couple of balls later he bowled an identicle delivery, at almost the same pace at Sanath, but he smacked him over square leg for a mighty six. But it wasn’t to be, our batsman simply were not good enough, that said most batsman would not have stood up to that test. The final was again thoroughly one sided as Australia creamed the Indians with Ponting stamping his class. The 2003 world cup was a bit of an enigma. Nobody would have guessed the semi finalists before the tournament began, and while Sri Lanka did well in the first round, they did bugger all in the super sixers and yet made the semis. It obviously wasn’t our best world cup, but it was one of my better cricket watching experiences. Heres to a good one in 2007.

P.s.
Herschelle Gibbs has just plundered six 6’s off one Van Bunge over. Minnow bashing at its best.

As I write this Vaas and Malinga are roughing up an inexperienced Bermudan side in Sri Lanka’s opening game in the 2007 edition of the cricket world cup. This is my 4th world cup as a cricket watcher, and while it’s started off a bit slow, I expect this one to be yet another great cricket watching experience. The first time I was introduced to the game was when my grandfather rudely interrupted a pillow fight between my brother and I to announce that there was cricket being shown on the tele. This was in August 1992, a test match between SL and Australia. I remember little of it except flashes of kaluwitharana (132n.o. on debut), Mahanama and Gurusinghe. And of course the 4th innings capitulation to Greg Matthews and one S.K. Warne. Luckily I wasn’t too put off by the terrible loss and continued to watch the game. Unfortunately by this time the 1992 World cup was over so I had to wait 3 and a half years for my first world cup.

The first game that I remember was the one we played against Zimbabwe. I was in school at the time and the only way to follow the first session was by the cheers that could be heard from the SSC. Soon afterwards however a bunch of us stole off to the ground to watch the second innings. We had cleaned up the Zims for a smallish score, 220 odd, but Sanath and Kalu were both out really early. Again my memory is sketchy but I remember Gurusinghe smacking some big big sixers and Aravinda playing beautifully for 90 odd. It was a great atmosphere at the SSC, there were naturally no seats but we were standing on the grass beyond long on so the view was great. I don’t think any of us realised what was to come over the 4 weeks. The first big game we played in ‘96 was against the Indians in Delhi I think. This was a weekend game so I watched the whole thing from home with the family. The first innings was terrible, Tendulkar smacked a hundred and we were looking down the barrel. But Sanath and Kalu had other ideas, Prabhakar was hit out of cricket, Srinath was smacked around and we danced in the living room in surprise and delight more than expectation, there didn’t seem any way that assault was sustainable. Sanath carried on for 70 something but even though Aravinda went cheap to Kumble, Hashan and the skip carried us home. I couldn’t even watch the Kenya game bc of school, I watched a bit of the Kenyan batting and only remember a guy called Onayango batting against Vaasy without any headgear and Vaas promptly bounced him and whacked him on the head. The mad bugger didn’t even flinch, and actually ran a leg bye off that.

The first quarter final was also a weekend game and there was just one highlight in that game, Sanath Jayasuriya. His assault was so devastating that Atherton called for a withdrawal of the 15 over restrictions. By this time most people had real expectations that Sri Lanka had a chance to go all the way, and I’m surprised that I actually went to school on the day of the semi-final, the day nighter in Bengal. At around 2 O clock everyone congregated around the Junior Science lab, around the single TV, to watch the opening exchanges. The first thing that struck me was the crowd. It was massive. I had never seen 100,000 ppl gathered at one venue, and I could not even imagine playing cricket in front of a crowd like that. I think everyone in the room was expecting the now fabled opening pair to fire. And fable is the appropriate word. It’s one of the great myths in world cricket that Sanath and Kalu set the world cup alight. In actual fact Kalu only managed about 70 runs in the whole world cup, most of which came in the Kenya game. Nonetheless, it was completely heartbreaking to see both of them being dismissed in the very first over. The science lab, packed to capacity with students, teachers, lab staff, pretty much everyone bar the principal, was in shocked silence, in complete contrast to Eden Gardens which erupted twice in 5 minutes. The lab emptied in no time, without Sanath I guess ppl thought our game plan was in tatters. A few of us stayed on in the lab and were treated to what remains one of the finest ODI innings of all time. Aravinda caressed, glided and stroked his way to a quite wonderful 66 off 40 something balls. Every shot was perfect, silky cover drives, smooth flicks and a couple of swivelled pulls and the momentum had shifted. When Guru played a silly shot and got out for 1 I don’t think any of us even noticed. When Kumble finally flattened Aravinda’s middle stump we were right back in the game. I rushed back home in time to watch Mahanama, Hashan and skipper nudge and nurdle us to a decent score.

There really is nothing quite like watching a day night game, test cricket is the sport in its purest and best form, but a quality day nighter can be almost as good entertainment wise. 250 odd was challenging, but the Indian batting was mighty and we needed to get early wickets. The family congregated around the living room tv and everyone was on their feet cheering when Sidhu fell early to Vaas. But Tendulkar and Manjrekar began to take the game away from us. They got close to a hundred for one when Tendulkar tried to paddle Sanath down to fine leg and took off for a single without realising Kalu had the ball in his gloves, the bails were whipped off and we were up, sarongs hiked up, fists in the air and yelling approval at the tv. And then the procession began. Azhar chipped one straight back at Dharmasena, Manjrekar was bowled around his legs and Jadeja was bowled by another Sanath ripper. Nobody could believe what was going on, the wicket had become demonic and even Dharmasena was turning it square. The living room was abuzz with appeals, screamed advice and raucous encouragement. The game finished on a sad note as the Calcutta crowd couldn’t accept defeat and disrupted the entire game. It didn’t make much difference, we were clearly the superior team and deserved every bit to go to Lahore.

The TV was on for several hours before the scheduled start of play in 1996 final, I wore my lucky shirt and as usual the whole extended family gathered in our living room, special floor cushions were brought from downstairs to accomodate the extras and nervous excitement filled the room. I still remember getting goosebumps as the team stood to attention for the national anthem, everyone at home stood up as well. Arjuna won the toss and for the nth time Vaas struck relatively early, Mark Waugh clipped him to square leg where Sanath held on to the biggest fish in the Aussie pond. Taylor and Ponting batted superbly, particularly tubby Taylor who was really aggressive and gave Pramodya Wickremasinghe a tough time. Just when they threatened to take the game away, Aravinda was brought into the attack and Taylor top edged a sweep and Sanath held a pressure catch at deep square and the room erupted in cheers and screams as aiya and I ran around punching the air. Ponting was cleaned up by Aravinda as he tried to late cut one that was too full and spun a fair bit. Warne was sent in as a pinch hitter and everyone was thrilled when the cocky bugger clumsily fell over a Murali off break as Kalu smartly whipped off the bails. When Steve Waugh got a leading edge off Dharmasena, we were very much in control. Stuart Law and Healy batted superbly to bring the Aussies back into the game, but 243 was a very chasable target.

The next 45 minutes was probably the slowest 45mins in my life. I was just so nervous, I desparately wanted the boys to win, but I was so proud that they had come so far I don’t think I would have cared if we lost at this stage. I remember Sanath’s eyes when he came out to bat. They were wide open and white as a sheet. That made me even more nervous. Sanath got an early boundary as he chipped McGrath over mid-wicket and his eyes widened even more. But something wasn’t right, he just seemed so edgy, my palms were sweaty and nobody spoke much in the first few overs. With Sanath on 8 he cut a Fleming ball hard into the ground and took off as the ball raced to McGrath at third man. To my horror Sanath turned blind and took off for a second. McGrath fired in a return, flat and perfect, Healy whipped off the bails and it looked tight as hell. Sanath’s bat looked marginally on the line, but the replay didn’t show clearly when the bails came off and the benefit of the doubt should have gone to Sanath, but the red light flashed and we were shattered. I was angry that the decision went against us and when Kalu tried to pull a Fleming skidder but only reached Bevan at square leg, things looked really bad. I guess deep down we expected a repeat of the semi-final, and by now we knew that the openers go for it and even if they do get out we bat really deep. But this was Australia, they had hammered us in the recent test series and though we matched them blow for blow in the B&H series in December/January, they won convincingly. We needed to beat them to give a little bit back for the treatment the team received in Australia earlier in the year. The Murali throwing incident, the ball tampering, the terrible terrible umpiring and finally the insult of Australia not playing in Colombo due to security fears.

Aravinda started superbly, driving dead straight followed by a pull high over mid-wicket and though it wasn’t quite as authoritative as the semi-final, he and the Guru helped us claw back into the game. We were cruising after a good century stand between the two vetarans. Warne didn’t look threatening, guru pulled him over long off for a huge six and things looked very good. Even the Aussie fielding was slack, Stuart Law dropped an absolute sitter off Gurusinghe at deep square, it really seemed to be our day. But it was Australia, they don’t give up. And sure enough Reiffel bowled a tight spell and forced Guru to play an ungainly swipe only to see off stump pegged back. Enter skipper, and the aussies were pumped. I don’t think we could have asked for a better pair to take us home. Arjuna, cool as ice, nudged Warne and Mark Waugh around for ones and twos while Aravinda did the same, punctuated with the odd boundary. When the required target was down to about 40 it slowly became clear that we’re actually going to win this. Warne drew Arjuna forward and he smashed one back at catchable height but Warne let it slip through; much to our delight. Arjuna then pulled a Warne full toss way over fine leg for six as the target fell exponentially. Everyone was on their feet by now, cheering, nervous, adrenaline racing. Aravinda caressed a couple of boundaries off McGrath and got to his 100 with a glorious flick to fine leg for 4. Aravinda, after all the years of wanton hooking and hoicking, had matured into one of the finest batsman of his generation, and this was his culmination. Australian shoulders finally dropped, and when Arjuna nudged McGrath down to third man for 4, the firecrackers split open the night. There were tears, embraces and the most naked joy and pride i have ever felt. A youthful Murali ran onto the field with Gurusinghe, Mahanama and the entire crew. Percy went crazy with his flag, and Benazhir Bhutto whispered something to Arjuna before giving him the trophy, Arjuna grinned, dimples and all, finally it was ours, we did it. And then they played that world cup song in urdu with clips from our campaign, and I remember watching it, head cocked to a side, silly smile on the face, letting it all sink in for the first time.