The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (32 page)

The Asgiriya pitch was not expecting call-up for international duties that year and had been hosting U-13 matting encounters between Trinity and St Anthony’s. The surface had only three days’ preparation, a fact kept from the already nervous New Zealanders.

The press box had a lone fax machine, a few typewriters and three dust-ridden overhead fans. There was a bar that served warm beer and a bird’s eye view of the pitch. The commentary boxes upstairs sent rumbles across the ceiling. The usual suspects spread themselves across empty chairs and absorbed the action.

As members of the press, we were informed that this test was a goodwill game between the SLBCC and the NZCB and was yet to be officially recognised by the ICC. That due to the prevalent situation in the country, our match reports would have to be approved by the government censor.

‘Cricket in Czechoslovakia must be like this,’ said Ari as we took our assigned seats with a who’s who of NZ sportswriting called this not for their fame or infamy, but because neither Ari nor I knew who was who.

New Zealand played an unchanged XI, while Sri Lanka replaced spinner Anurasiri and paceman Kurupparachchi with spinner Mathew and paceman Ramanayake. The first session proved a fascinating contest. Accurate bowling by the two Ratnayakes matched by cautious defence by Franklin and Jones. Pradeep Mathew came on just before lunch and made Jones jump in the way of a darter. He then dispensed of Horne with a googly.

The tourists went to lunch at 73–2 and we were informed that the ICC had officially bestowed test match status on this game. Invigorated by the buffet, the Kiwis came out guns blazing. Future rivals Crowe Jr and Turner, the wine and cheese man and the beer and pie man, hit our medium pacers out of the attack and within half an hour the score was 111 for 2. Captain Mendis tossed the ball to Pradeep Mathew, whose figures stood at 2–47.

What followed was the finest spell of spin bowling or any bowling, on this or any other planet, that I or anyone else could ever have seen.

Turner taunted the young chinaman bowler by imitating his ungainly action as he tossed the ball back to mid-on. Pradeep, unperturbed, returned to his mark with intent on his face. He adjusted his headband. He rolled up his sleeves as if to commit a long premeditated act of violence. He stumbled in to bowl three perfect googlies which Crowe read and avoided. On the fourth ball, Crowe attempted a cut, only to find the ball reversing onto his stumps.

With the new batsman, Mathew shifted to orthodox spin. The flight and drift were perfect, the ball curling just out of the batsman’s reach. The trajectory was like a whip in mid-crack. By 1987, Mathew was not a stranger to Ari and me, though we were unaware he had weapons like the boru ball, responsible for Crowe Sr and Evan Gray’s demises.

New Zealand 113 for 5. Turner knocked Gurusinha for a few boundaries at the other end, but made the fatal error of taking a single on the last ball. He faced Mathew who dished out an unplayable finger spinner, followed by the undercutter, the ball backspinning and staying low. Turner kicked the pitch in annoyance and said something unprintable to the bowler.

Mathew bowled him a chinaman and a googly, both of which he saw out.

Then out of nowhere a medium-paced leaper rose off the pitch and smashed into Turner’s hook nose. The batsman advanced down the pitch and had to be restrained.

We watched in stunned silence as carrom flicks and darters were mixed in with stock deliveries. The variation was mesmerising, the control exquisite. Hadlee, Bracewell and Sneddon scatterd like hacked limbs as Mathew raced to his eighth wicket. Palitha Epasekera mentioned the words ‘world record’ and everyone in the press box became excited. Mathew’s 8–50 was well ahead of the then Sri Lankan record, Ravi Ratnayake’s 8–83 vs Pakistan.

‘This is an upset,’ said the Kiwi journalist with the beak.

‘Just because you’re upset doesn’t make it an upset,’ grinned Ari, snapping his flashing camera at ten-minute intervals.

The former Sri Lankan record holder himself stood at mid-on and shared a kind word with the bowler. The Sri Lankan field crowded the batsmen as Mathew sent down consecutive maidens. The shadows of the surrounding hills tickled the boundary line and the New Zealand team stood outside their dressing room in various degrees of agitation. Turner got a single. Smith fended off a looping chinaman. Then he bowled it.

It pitched wide off leg, like a misplaced carrom ball, cut onto the off stump, then darted back into the stumps. The double bounce ball, cricket’s most magnificent creation. There was a loud boo from the New Zealand dressing room. Last man Chatfield swung at a top spinner, an edge flew by keeper Kuruppu, and they got a single.

Turner patted the wicket with the bat and shouted to the dressing room. ‘This pitch is fucked!’ Mathew then bowled another double bounce ball, this time turning from off to leg to take the middle stump. Turner stormed off in disgust.

New Zealand slumped from 111 for 2 to 117 all out. Mathew’s figures sat plainly on the scoreboard. 10–51. Two better than Jim Laker. There was jubilation in the press box as the players went in for tea. This wasn’t like Kuruppu’s slow double hundred. This was a real world record.

But all joy is fleeting. The New Zealanders refused to take the field after tea, calling the pitch ‘a shocker’. Intense discussions followed on the field between New Zealand tour management and the umpires. The Minister himself came down from the VIP stand to a standing ovation. The two captains were called and without pomp or ceremony the match was abandoned, as was the New Zealand tour.

The Minister gave an impromptu press conference minus anyone who was actually on the field. ‘The pitch has been deemed unsuitable …’

The three sessions of play were declared null and void. We were told that any paper publishing a match report would have its licence revoked. We looked on forlornly as history was erased. Cricket in Czechoslovakia indeed. It was the match that would never exist.

Asgiriya would have to wait six more years to host another test match. Today there is no record of the record, even in
Wisden.
There is no record of a second test match taking place. But everyone who was there knows what they saw. And for once, Ari and I agree. Whatever the reason for New Zealand’s collapse, it had very little to do with the pitch.

The fielder clad in armour who squats behind the batsman should be respected as a specialist and not treated as a dabbler. The wicketkeeper controls the mood around the pitch. His gloves hold most of the catches, his voice accompanies every appeal. He is the factory foreman, responsible for every ball.

In the early days, cricket valued its specialists. A wicketkeeper, like an opening bowler, was never expected to contribute with the bat. Times have changed.

Today, selectors face a wicketkeeper conundrum. Should we select purely on the basis of talent behind the stumps or should we consider batting? Do you pick a flawless keeper who averages 12.00 or a full-fledged batsman who may spill a sitter?

There is a young man from New South Wales who will soon replace Ian Healy as Australia’s stumper. I have seen him bat and I predict that soon he will close the door on this debate.

My only meeting with former Bloomfield wicketkeeper and acquaintance of Mathew, Mr Uvais Amalean, is at the ’98 Singer–Akai Nidahas Trophy final. The game is as good as gone. India are 230 without loss in the 40th over. India’s nuclear warheads, Tendulkar and Ganguly, both on unbeaten centuries, are ready to begin meltdown.

Then, against the run of play, a wicket falls, followed by two more. Azhar, Sachin, Ganguly miraculously succumb to our assembly line of low-grade spinners and the stadium rocks to frenzy. 262–4.

The mantra of ’96 had been: ‘We can chase anything.’ Our losses in South Africa had shaken this faith, but had not dented it.

Uvais Amalean had hung up his gloves years ago and was now a director at Singer, the name on the national team’s jerseys. He stands on the steps of the Nidahas pavilion, sporting a shaven head, a walkie-talkie and an annoyed expression. For a keeper he is tall. He has the gangly build of a pace bowler, though retirement has added pounds to his face and midriff. Like most bald men he is probably unaware of the roll of fat by the nape of his neck.

I have just bought a copy of his autobiography
Mr Average
at the gate despite the mockery of my two associates. ‘Pramodya Dharmasena’s biography,
Not Fast, Not Spin,
out now, Wije! Hurry!’

Amalean, the last Thomian to play for Sri Lanka, managed to make the 1989 tour to Australia as understudy to Brendon Kuruppu, and played a few matches in the early 1990s. But the selectors played musical chairs with the keeper’s berth and Amalean, reluctant to compete with younger men like Dunusinghe, Dasanayake and Lanka Silva, decided to bow out in ’93.

Two more wickets fall, but Sri Lanka are unable to prevent the visitors from crossing 300. In the corner of the stand, a potbellied drunk in a straw hat falls off his chair, staggers to his feet and starts unzipping his trousers. The stand begins hooting and, encouraged, the drunk undoes his belt.

Uvais Amalean enters the scene, flanked by security. ‘Kick all those buggers out,’ he hisses into his walkie-talkie. I accost him as he is passing and ask him to autograph his book. He is visibly flattered.

Security descends on the situation like flies on dog poop. As the drunks are herded past the toilets, the papare band flares up an ode to Surangani and her fish and the rest of us cheer as India end their innings at 307.

Ari pretends he met Uvais during an STC Old Boys Stag Night and pours on the charm. I attempt flattery. ‘In vain you retired, men. Look how many catches Kalu dropped.’

Jonny rolls his eyes, but Uvais nods. ‘He almost messed up that stumping.’ He then invites us to the sponsor’s box, and that’s when Jonny stops rolling his eyes.

The Premadasa Stadium, named after Ari’s benevolent dictator, is easily our most modern. The ground is equipped with floodlights, an electronic scoreboard and freshly cropped turf. The VIP lounge puts Jonny’s High Commission room to shame. The seats are padded, the bar is stocked, the air is conditioned and the view is sublime. We all grin at each other.

We receive seats up front and Ari and Jonny glare at me as I hesitate and then decline an offer of Bacardi and Pepsi, the unofficial sponsor. Uvais plonks himself in the seat in front of us and tells us that Sri Lanka will win.

‘We are good at chasing.’

The sponsor’s lounge is crowded with Singer logos, finger food and sycophants with smiles. Everyone who passes through the room comes over to our corner and shakes Uvais’s hand. It is then I realise that Amalean is politicking.

‘Petty politics has ruined this country and it will ruin our cricket if it is not stopped.’

Uvais is running for SLBCC president. His interaction with guests follows a very basic formula.

Long-lost brother greeting: ‘Ammataudu, kohomada? After a long time.’

Small talk: ‘Putting on, ah? How is so-and-so? You don’t call us, no, now you’re a big shot.’

Cricket talk: ‘Otherwise? We will hammer them. We still have the classic batting line-up.’

Empty promise: ‘Of course. Let’s meet up. Definitely. I will call you.’

An Aravinda de Silva century, flanked by double-figure contributions by Messrs Jayasuriya, Atapattu, Kaluwitharana and Ranatunga, and the soundtrack of Uvais’s election banter, punctuate a revealing evening under floodlights.

‘They got rid of Ana Punchihewa, then Whatmore. What more?’ Uvais has a high-pitched hyena laugh. The three of us laugh at the laugh and not at the joke.

‘Selection should be on merit, not on favours. In my era, how many talented players were kept out?’

That was our cue. Jonny, Ari and I grab the mic at the same time.

‘Did you play with Pradeep Mathew?’

There is more hyena giggling and then he tells us about the 1989 Aussie tour and Pradeep’s courtship of Shirali Fernando.

The score reaches 200 for 4 just after the 30th. Sri Lanka looks on course. Amalean tells us how he kept wickets to Mathew for three seasons. ‘Man was injured a lot. But in my last season, he was amazing.’

The wicketkeeper and the spinner had a secret code. Mathew painted the index and ring fingers of his right (non-bowling) hand brown with ‘some Hindu powder from the kovil’. The painted fingers would indicate the direction of the spin, the unpainted ones the length. From there on, it got complicated.

‘In the end it was too much to remember. How many variations? Pradeep liked bowling with me. The Silvas and the Alwises wouldn’t put up with this hand signal nonsense.’

Uvais tells stories of Mathew spending the last three years of his career not talking with the captain or the vice captain.

‘Hello, Uvais. My God, Karunasena and Byrd! How? How?’

The former MD, now president of the SLBCC, Jayantha Punchipala, is Uvais’s opponent in the upcoming election. He has the blessings of the new minister and the establishment. His smile is as steely as his handshake. ‘You’ve met Dhani.’