Loku thinks I am a drunkard, Maddhu thinks I should have married a Sinhalese, Bala thinks I stole his inheritance. Akka did not approve of me till she was born again and then I became her pet leper. There are allegations that I once got drunk and insulted Loku’s wife, but you know my response to this.
I pay Bala what he thinks I owe him, give Maddhu a bottle of Scotch. The atmosphere is cordial, my nieces and nephews are friendly, and by the time we all depart for Christmas lunch at Loku’s, the thawing of the ice has begun. We discuss children, our official story being that Garfield is in London, studying engineering.
‘I say, what engineering, ah?’ asks Maddhu.
‘Civil,’ says Sheila and everyone oohs and aahs.
Sheila is delightful and the wives invite her to the kitchen to help with the preparation. When a bottle of Scotch is opened and I refuse, saying I have given up, there are raised eyebrows followed by softening postures.
Maddhu, Bala and Akka’s husband discuss which government should be blamed for which catastrophe and I play the good listener. Loku does not speak.
Lunch goes off well and by the time we are having our fruit salad and ice cream, Loku is talking about cricket and I am generously holding my tongue. My cheeks have grown numb from the smiling. We are about to finish tea, about to begin the choreographed ritual, about to say goodbye four times, once while seated, once standing, once at the door, once again at the car.
I could have held a 0–0 draw. But at the ninetieth minute, I concede a penalty.
Loku, now lubricated and shed of his airs, talks about how he embraces all religions, how he has friends who are Muslim and Hindu and even Christian. This is as historic as the fall of apartheid. Akka and her husband smile and accept the olive branch.
‘We are all God’s children after all.’
‘Sheila, you are a …?’ asks Maddhu’s wife, a staunch temple sil maaniya.
‘I am a Methodist,’ says Sheila in her sweetest voice. ‘But my sisters are Buddhist.’ She then gathers the cups and saucers.
‘Don’t be silly,’ says Loku’s wife and grabs the tray, blushing. If it were just about Sheila, I think the draw would have held.
Right then I feel the creature crawling around my spine. The slinky cat monkey is awake and is thirsty and would settle for a cigarette. I refrained all day. Even while Bala was puffing his Benson in my face. Ignore it and it will go away. Last over. Almost there.
‘Wije is a …?’ asks Bala’s wife, a gossip, seeing a sliver of an opportunity for some drama. I smile and give my cup to Sheila. She looks at me as if I am an infant about to throw my food on the floor.
‘You are also a Methodist?’ asks Loku. He is trying to make it sound like an innocent question. The creature claws at my neck and I take a deep breath.
‘No, he’s not,’ says Sheila, hiding her terror behind a smile.
I look at the people who have slandered, ignored and distrusted me my whole life. I think about white lies and paths of least resistance. Then I think, ah, what the hell.
‘Loku Aiya. I don’t actually … believe in religion.’
‘Which … religion?’
‘All religion. It’s all the same.’ I pause and arch my eyebrow. ‘It’s all nonsense.’
I will not give you a blow-by-blow. I cannot be bothered. The discussion rages for the next one and a half hours and ends with Loku calling me a drunk and me calling him a fool. Everyone hugs Sheila as I drag her from the house into Ari’s Capri. No one looks me in the eye or says goodbye.
Back home in Mount Lavinia, the street kids call me whenever they are playing cricket. I umpire their games at least twice a week, even though it interferes with my sleeping schedule. Not only is it fun watching their unorthodox, swashbuckling cricket from close up, it is also good to have one’s word respected and never questioned. There are no disputes and everyone calls me Umpire Sir.
I inspect the tennis ball after every over, I adjudge ‘any wicket’ runouts, I even offer street cricket something it never receives: accurate LBW decisions. The games are absorbing. The talent varies from chuckers whose balls bounce thrice to a batsman who can hit sixers at will. Sometimes a mother sends a girl with a tray of Sunquick. Sometimes the game goes to the last ball. At no time do I ever think of anything else.
Item 4 on my list was to make peace with my family. Item 9 was to become a cricket umpire. I am hoping that one success can cancel out a failure.
Elmo Tawfeeq is a competent writer who is fond of clichés and never criticises Sri Lanka. As a result, he was once regularly taken on tour with the national team. I try not to despise him as much as everyone else does. He has made a career of writing glowing tributes to whoever happened to be the captain at the time.
He once told me that Pradeep would never play for Sri Lanka.
Elmo had been put in charge of filming an AV for some SLBCC dinner dance, a tribute to the great captains of Sri Lanka. Footage for the AV was gathered from the match that preceded the dinner dance: Captain’s XI vs Skipper’s XI.
‘I only wrote and directed it.’
This took place many years before my own documentary, so I could only nod and look impressed.
‘We had to ask players who the best captain of Sri Lanka was. These pups hadn’t heard of Gunasekera or Tissera or Tennekoon. All said either the Skipper or the Captain.’
While Sri Lanka has had eight test captains to date, only the Skipper in the 1980s and the Captain in the 1990s held sway for any length of time.
‘I interviewed whole team. Then caught this Mathew chap. On camera and all, after one of their practices. I asked “How would you compare captaincy styles between the Skipper and the Captain?”’
Mathew stroked his chin, and after careful deliberation replied, ‘I believe it is a subtle distinction. The Skipper is a prick. The Captain is a cunt.’
And then he walked off.
Elmo laughed louder than me. ‘Trust me, Karuna. That boy will never play for Sri Lanka again.’
As with most of Elmo’s cricketing analysis, this was proved wrong.
In cricket’s class-conscious days, the rich played for love and called themselves amateurs; the working class played for money and were known disparagingly as professionals. The aristocrats considered themselves custodians of the game’s spirit. The working stiffs pocketed cheques and called the amateurs Mr.
The annual game between them was called Gentlemen vs Players. The assumption was that anyone who played sport for anything other than romance could not be called a Gentleman. This idea died when the annual Gentlemen vs Players encounter was abolished in 1962 and every first-class cricketer turned professional. When the meaning of the word amateur changed from gentleman dabbler to lazy incompetent.
Today no one hides the fact that they are mercenary, all they argue about is the price. And no one associated with cricket dares call themselves a gentleman, even in jest.
23 January 1999. Ari has squabbled with one of his daughters and is watching the match at my place. It is a poya morning, and I have wrapped up the previous night’s writing early so I can be fresh for the game.
Last week, after three successive losses, Sri Lanka pulled off a miraculous win against Australia. Perhaps the renaissance of the World Champions had begun just in time for the World Cup.
‘These beggars won’t get past the first round,’ snarls Ari.
‘Why you’re so negative? Look how they played last game.’
Poya days are dry days; the one day of the month when Sri Lankans are free to drink and there’s cricket on TV, they ban the sale of liquor. This used to be a great cause of chagrin for me. Not any more.
‘I mean, are these bowlers?’ laments Ari.
Stewart and Knight blaze to 60 in 10 overs. Ranatunga changes Pramodya and brings on Charith Silva.
‘You are to blame for this fool being back in the side.’
I blush. ‘Guilty, your lordship.’
The papers are the same they’ve been for the last fifteen years. Death count on the front page, cricket score on the back. The government had captured a boat and killed seventeen Tigers, Lara had scored 132 against Pakistan.
In Venezuela a man called Chavez had been elected president. I bumped into old man Bandara at the cigarette kade this morning. He told me this man was the new Che Guevara. Old man Bandara used to be known as Comrade Banda in the days of Keuneman and Soysa. He once sold me a Sinhala translation of Trotsky that he spent five years writing.
‘What do you think of this Chavez?’ I ask Ari. ‘Comrade Banda thinks he’s another Castro.’
‘Bullshit,’ says Ari. ‘All these Latin bastards are funded by the CIA. Or they are assassinated. This bugger won’t last.’
Stewart falls, then Hick comes and bashes Murali for two fours. This match feels just as pointless as I do.
‘But it will come back to them. You watch,’ says Ari. ‘The US are due for another Pearl Harbor soon.’
I scour the rest of the morning’s papers.
‘Here. King Hussein of Jordan died.’
‘Big deal,’ says Ari. ‘That bugger gave his arse to the West.’
‘You’re in a good mood, no?’
‘Arabs need a bugger like Nasser. There was a leader. All these fellows now, even that Arafat …’
I stop listening to Ari and seconds later he stops talking. It is the 18th over; the commentators are West Indian great Malcolm Holding, and our friend and yours, Graham Snow.
‘No ball called from square leg. Now hang on, what’s this about?’
Snow stutters. ‘No ball called from square leg.’
‘I believe it’s coming back to haunt Murali,’ says Holding in his Jamaican growl. ‘Umpire Emerson points to the elbow. Looks like trouble.’
‘I knew this would bloody happen,’ says Ari.
We watch Ross Emerson no-ball Murali from square leg for the third time.
‘Captain Ranatunga wants to speak with both umpires,’ says Graham.
‘This could have very, very serious ramifications,’ says Holding.
And then there is finger wagging. The last time I saw this kind of defiance was in ’87, when Englishman Mike Gatting took on Pakistani umpire Shakoor Rana. The incident resulted in an exchange of expletives and the souring of relations. England has not toured Pakistan since.
This is even uglier. We have a man fatter and angrier than Gatting himself, dressed in gaudy blue, folded rag hanging from his circular waist, visor glinting, leaning forward and shoving finger into face. His opponent makes the fat man look athletic. Emerson lifts a weak hand and cuts a pear-shaped figure, wrong-footed by his own deeds.
I have never felt prouder of Arjuna. Not when he scored 52 in the inaugural test. Not even when he lifted the Cup in ’96.
Ari and I fall back into discussion. I tell him ICC tests reveal that Murali’s action is unusual and supple, but not that it is illegal. Ari says that Murali chucks his top-spinner and his so-called doosra. We remember how our last argument on this subject ended and we keep our tones even.
Ranatunga bowls Murali from the Emerson end, an act of brazenness that makes my heart melt. He insists the umpire stand up to the stumps, rendering him incapable of judging the elbow straightening. A Sri Lankan standing up to an Australian in Australia and winning. It is glorious.
‘This is disgraceful,’ says Ari. ‘The umpire’s word is law. Arjuna can’t bully him like that.’
Twenty years ago I might have agreed with him. Back then I believed in the glory of the West and in our own savagery. No longer. We spent centuries making the white man rich and then bowing to his pleases and thank yous. The tragedy is, we still do it, even though we wear different costumes and hold different titles.
Everywhere, that is, except in cricket. A Sachin is worth a thousand Kirstens; a Wasim, a thousand Caddicks. Us brown folk play the game better and we should no longer apologise for our quirks; in fact, we should celebrate them, and, if necessary, defend them.
‘Wije, you’re like a bloody Paki. This is not a race thing. Australia has helped our cricket. They gave us tours throughout the 1980s. Where do you think Whatmore is from?’
‘Don’t talk cock, men. Murali has bowled everywhere. Only in Australia, he is a chucker. Only when we are winning.’
Emerson, now a cowering shell of a man, miscounts the over, signals 6 when it should be 4, and mutters something to Ranatunga who snarls back, ‘Why not? I am in charge here. Why not?’
The stump mic is turned off.
None of this prevents England from blasting 302 for 3. As the TIC and one of the Chappells are interviewed by Harry Bole during the break, Ari says one thing that I do not find stupid. ‘Whatever you say, Wije, I believe Ranatunga just saved Murali’s career. You heard the commentators, no? The world will be scared to take us on.’
‘They should be.’
‘If only Pradeep had a captain like this to defend him,’ says Ari, ‘who knows what would’ve happened?’
It turns out to be one of the greatest games of them all. Not just because of the morning’s drama. Many had been seeing Sri Lanka as a beleaguered team of has-beens who could no longer compete. Maybe this is our turning point, the moment where we recapture the spirit of 1996.
Jayawardena’s century cancels out Graham Hick’s. Sanath, Hashan and the Captain shine; Kalu, Marvan and Vaas fail. We are left with Chandana and Mahanama, 34 runs and 4 overs from the finish.
I realise that when it comes down to it, our cricket retains the passion of the street. The West respects law, but questions authority. It is us who bow down to lawmakers even as we disregard laws. Today we reverse that. We dare to call the umpire a hora.
We are now infused with the spirit. If our boys could defy the odds here, perhaps we have a shot at retaining the World Cup. The spirit pushes our bodies towards the screen. I am rubbing my hands over my thighs, Ari is pacing the room. Even he does not mind when Mahanama cheats.
Darren Gough steams in for a probable run-out and our man Roshan runs into him and pretends it was an accident. The Yorkshireman screams obscenities at the batsman and is centimetres away from butting his head. England captain Stewart shoulder-charges Mahanama and is unrepentant. This is not Lord’s or the MCC. This is urchin cricket played on the streets of Mariyakade or de Saram Road. The Poms are finally playing it Lankan style.