The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (46 page)

New Zealand rugby cricket and basketball teams are respectively called the All Blacks, the Black Caps and the Tall Blacks. The New Zealand badminton team call themselves the Black Cocks. (This is not a joke, look it up.)

When asked why by the press, the NZ badminton chief shrugged and replied that in fifteen years of holding that post, he had never seen a journalist. Since the rebranding, he has seen over twenty. As the Americanos would say, go and figure.

‘I know you’re drinking again.’

It is a crow-filled morning. I am at the tail end of my day’s writing, readying myself for my afternoon slumber.

‘What rot are you talking? I haven’t touched the stuff since … I can’t remember.’

‘You think I don’t know why you shower at six in the morning and gargle Listerine three times a day? You think I’m a ponytail Chinaman?’

‘Because I’m hygienic, I must be boozing? Aney, get out, men.’

‘I have lived with you for thirty-five years. When have you ever been hygienic? You stayed off it for a year. What happened?’

‘My friend Jonny died.’

‘Gamini, I will give you a slap.’

‘OK. It’s all my fault. I’m weak.’

She sits down and strokes the back of my neck. I look down at my Jinadasa and punch some keys.

‘I have to write, Sheila.’

I think I prefer it when she is shouting and throwing things. Then I can beat her with logic and wit.

‘This last year has been very tough for me, Sheila. How can you understand?’

The slap is sudden and it rattles my dentures.

‘I don’t understand? Who has to explain to your brothers? Who has to bring up your son? Who has to wait till you write your big masterpiece? You’re the mad man who doesn’t understand.’

I hold my cheek and retort, ‘Has anyone seen me drinking? Has anyone found a bottle in this house?’

Sheila looks across my desk, picks up one of Ari’s drawings and frowns at it.

‘Gamini. Lie to yourself if you like. I know why you work in the middle of the night. Why you take the route past the rubbish on your morning walks. Why you are suddenly washing your own teacups.’

I close my typewriter, knowing that there will be no more work for the day.

‘Ari is Sherlock. Now you are Miss Marple? After all I have gone through, this is the accusation? And you physically abuse an innocent man. A drop has not even touched my …’

‘Ari told Manouri that y’all got drunk at that Jonny’s house.’

The bloody fool. I cannot help that his testicles reside in his wife’s handbag. I will deny till I die.

‘He got drunk. I drank tea. Sheila, I’m writing my cricket book. I have no time for booze.’

She holds both my hands in her lap and leans forward. I avert my face, feigning indignation and offence, half-expecting another slap.

‘If you want, keep lying,’ she says. ‘I just want one thing from you.’

‘Then will you let me go?’

‘Of course. I want us to sit and discuss this. You and me. One hour. No typewriters.’

‘When?’

‘Today sunset. Right after your nap. The only time of day that you are sober. We’ll go to the beach. No one will shout. No one will throw things. If we are to let you drink yourself to death, let us at least have discussed it like adults beforehand.’

‘I’m sober now.’ Deny till you die. ‘We can go for a walk now.’

She places a kiss on my cheek and smiles. ‘Maybe you will need to think about what you’re going to say to me.’ She clears the cups from my desk. ‘I’ll see you at 5.30.’

There is a theory that drunks are plagued by thirsty ghosts who wander purgatory seeking earthly delights. Of course it is an absolve-myself-of-responsibility theory and that is probably why I like it. When alcoholics and depressives refer to demons, this is perhaps what they believe.

It is unnerving to think that the dead walk among us and are invisible, particularly if you are a curvaceous young girl about to take a bath. But it is as likely an explanation as any, if you believe in a soul, which even godless W.G. Karunasena does. When we feel despair, it is a thousand-year-old spirit cursing in our ear; when we feel craving it is a drunk apparition coaxing our tongue.

I take a bottle of Mendis Double Distilled to Reggie’s Panadura residence. It is as much to coax his tongue as it is to steady mine. His home is built on a plot of land that would be considered spacious in Colombo, except that it is bisected by an ugly wall. Two postboxes sit in opposition to each other on painted gates. R.O.B. Ranwala and A.R.L. Ranwala.

Both gates have Beware of Dog signs, though only one house appears to have canines. I approach A.R.L. because it is closest and watch as three parayas rush to the gate, barking loud enough to wake the neighbours, which is what happens. An old watcher calls out. ‘Lionel mahattaya or Reggie mahattaya?’

‘Reggie.’

‘This side.’

The wall goes through the house. On brother Lionel’s side, a second floor is being added. The dogs return to running through bamboo scaffolding. Brother Reggie’s does not appear to have been renovated in decades.

He comes to the gate wearing a Sri Lanka cricket shirt and a Sri Lanka cricket hat and a green sarong. His eyes light up at the bottle of Mendis.

‘I have seen you somewhere before.’

‘I write for
Sportstar,’
I say, handing over the bottle. I decline to mention that it was three articles, three years ago.

‘Ah. You must know Rajesh Singh.’

‘Why not? Raj is a good friend of mine. How do you know him?’

‘He was same batch as my good friend Dilip Vengsarkar.’

‘What? You know Vengsarkar?’

‘Vengsarkar’s wife and my wife are second cousins.’

‘Gurusinha is married to my aunty’s niece.’

He leads me through small rooms with red floors and too much furniture. We enter a dark room at the end of the house.

‘Ah. So must’ve seen you at the matches.’ He scrutinises the mess of typefaces on the Mendis bottle as if he is choosing a fine wine. ‘Even if I am plastered, I always remember faces.’

When he opens the curtains, I see the room is larger than I first thought. It resembles a gift shop in a Nugegoda mall selling only Sri Lankan cricket paraphernalia. In the corner, hanging in an open almirah, is every Sri Lankan cricket shirt from 1985’s canary yellow/sailor blue number to today’s multi-coloured, tea logo-branded monstrosity.

Photographs are not framed, but pasted with cellotape on walls. Each features Reggie, with his papare trumpet, a different style of Sri Lankan T-shirt and the same moustache, with his arm around Kapil, Imran, Wasim, Arjuna, Shane, Gower, Viv, Hadlee, Aravinda, Tyson, Trueman.

‘You know Graham Snow?’

‘Why not?’

‘He dedicated his latest book to me and my friend.’

‘I have lot of books, but don’t get to read, no time. Every time I start, I fall asleep. You want cricket books? My friend Elmo Tawfeeq has a tha-dang library.’

If only he’d use it, I think.

‘My friend Newton Rodrigo, you must be knowing, women’s team coach, also was a journalist …’

I nod.

‘He gave me this.’

I look in fury at my own copy of
The Art of Cricket.
I flip open the pages.

‘It is autographed by Bradman himself.’

I turn to the title page.
Best Wishes Donald Bradman

‘That bloody bastard. Can I use your phone?’

‘For what?’

I tell him I’m going to call Newton and scream at him for lending my book out. Reggie’s face changes. ‘No. No. You take your book. No need to call.’ He tries to distract me with autographed bats, balls, pads and gloves, and then pours me a drink. It works.

White sunlight illuminates grubby walls. Next to a pile of video cassettes is a large TV, dusty, with duty-free sticker still intact. In the background a Sinhala station plays Gunadasa Kapuge. The red floors are unpolished and cluttered with souvenirs. Anything concave has been turned into an ashtray.

Batsmen describe it as getting your eye in, American sportswriters refer to being ‘in the zone’, but that doesn’t quite explain it. I drink to attain a level. The level is the point where your thoughts are clear, your body is relaxed and your manner has charm. The optimum before the returns diminish and you turn into a beast.

When I was young, two drinks would get me to the level and I would stop. Those days are long gone. For a long time my level was a half-bottle and anything more would relieve me of my dignity. Then it was two-thirds of a bottle, then it became one and a quarter. As the quantity increased I would move from Distilled to Old to Blue Label to gal.

But then the level would waver, my clarity would become fleeting, unpredictable, my charm would dwindle, my control would vanish. And that’s when I would hurl insults like that caged monkey at Dehiwela Zoo who would hurl faeces at visitors.

When Reggie hands me the drink, I think about the level and I tell myself it will be two drinks. The first shot is devastating, my tongue goes into shock and my eyes start tearing. It will be difficult to make it to two. I will keep filling his glass and topping mine with shandy. I shall use the arrack to give me clarity, but I will not let it control me. So that one day perhaps I may drink with impunity and without symptoms.

‘So, Reggie malli. Tell me about the 278,000.’

Every time before I step out to umpire, both captains – the tallest Marzooq boy and the nastiest beach boy – go over the rules with me. Houses are out. Windows are minus 6. The mango tree and beyond is 4 and 6. There are no back runs and the batting side will provide a wicketkeeper.

These rules are subject to fluctuation depending on the number and calibre of players. It is I who insist on clarifying the rules before the toss and on marking the score in my notebook.

The most fascinating debate is over the not-out batsman. Do we, like in real cricket, deny him batting when he runs out of partners? Or do we let him play on, the innings ending only when every single player has been dismissed?

On Sri Lanka’s streets and playgrounds, this is known as last man/no chance vs last man/have chance. No chance means he doesn’t bat, have chance means he does. No chance means that there is no hope if the side lets you down. Have chance means that it is possible for one player to single-handedly deliver victory. I know which one I prefer.

Flight is how long the ball hangs in the air. Drift is the trajectory it takes from fingers to pitch. Mastery of these two elements is what makes a great spin bowler. Everything else is frills.

The strategy for grappling with a spinner is to use your feet, get to the pitch of the ball and smother it before it deceives you. Good flight makes a ball appear closer than it is. Good drift makes a batsman commit to a shot he may not be able to play. Take away flight and drift and you’re just a slow bowler who turns the ball. Insert these ingredients and you become a magician.

In Zimbabwe in 1994, at the twilight of his career, having mastered flight, drift and when to use which, Mathew bowled an assortment of some of the most unusual deliveries ever invented. He was no-balled for a ball that flew some 20 feet skywards before bouncing on the wickets. The ball was deemed illegal for, as the umpire put it, ‘hanging in the air too long’.

In the end I only had three drinks and Reggie had the rest. He is babbling like a baby as we walk to the Panadura bus stop. I should have left when he started drooling into his lap. Instead I stayed till his emotional age plummeted from teenager to toddler. I told him to pull himself together. On the way, I buy six Hacks toffees, which I consume two at a time.

‘Hiding from your wife, ah?’ he says, wiping his tears. ‘My wife also complains. I tell her my car, my petrol.’

The petrol is burning a hole in my stomach; I cannot wait to go home and pass out. Sleep is the best antidote to pain. It serves to combat hunger, sometimes even life. I pull him back when he almost walks into the path of a Lanka Ashok Leyland truck, its name revealing its multinational origins.

Zebra crossings in Sri Lanka are not directives but optional suggestions which motorists ignore. Traffic lights may some day go the same way.

‘Mr Karuna, I can’t walk all that way, I’m a bit cut. Do you have that payment?’

‘Will three do it?’

‘Three hundred?’ He frowns.

‘Thou.’

He grins and hugs me and burps a vat of arrack breath into my nostrils.

‘Anything more you want to know about Mathew or Sana or Arjuna, you call me.’

I hand him the notes and get on the 101 bus. I fall asleep and wake up in Fort.

It takes me a few moments to realise that the word Reggie keeps repeating is surreal. He pronounces it ‘soori-al’ as one would pronounce Sooriyarachchi or the Sanskrit word for sun.

‘Maara soorial those African tests, ah. They say it was the devil winds that blew down from Mount Nyanga and that’s the reason.’

‘Mount what?’ I begin to regret allowing Reggie the rest of the bottle.

‘There was something soorial about all those matches.’

‘Like what?’