The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (49 page)

After the door slammed, the then-MD picked up the phone and began screaming abuse into it. Reggie listened as the ranting, raving voice retreated to the other end of the suite and faded onto a balcony overlooking Porirua. Reggie crawled to the door, looked both ways, opened it, and ran.

If my stack of tall stories now resembles the Manhattan skyline, then let this last one be its Empire State. All I will say is this. It took seven drinks for Reggie to relate this story. His shoulders may have slouched, his eyes may have reddened, his moustache may have twitched, his belly may have itched, at times he may have repeated himself and forgotten his place – but not once, not once, I tell you, did he touch his Sri Lanka Cricket cap.

A traditional chinaman, but bowled with open chest and a shrug of the shoulders, causing the ball to linger in the air. Ari and Jonny call it the slow-motion delivery. It is the easiest of Mathew’s variations to pick; the change in delivery stride is palpable.

‘It is energy extraction at its most primal,’ says Ari, showing off yet again. ‘Mathew momentarily displaces kinetic energy and then guides it towards its trajectory.’ Ari scribbles a formula on a napkin and shows it to Jonny. Jonny grabs the napkin, blows his nose on it and hands it back. ‘Here. Calculate the viscosity of that.’ Ah. The good ole days.

Ari comes over to berate me about my boozing.

‘I’m just saying, Wije, look at me. I drank for Jonny, then stopped. When you keep your word to yourself, good things happen. Look at last week’s Royal–Tho, Ratwatte’s Thoras won by …’

‘Can we stop with your Thora bullshit?’

‘You are looking weak, Wije. Do you realise you are killing yourself?’

If only he knew. That is all I have been thinking about. My death and Charles Darwin and Cary Grant.

I have come across two clippings from my scrapbooks, both from local newspapers, both yellow and faded. If this book gets published I will include both photos on this page, though I do not know how much it costs to have photos in books. But I do not mind bearing the cost for the sake of my reader.

Who is this reader? Who am I writing for? Some days I think I am writing for Pradeep. To preserve his legacy before it is forgotten. To encourage other Pradeeps out there. Other days I feel I am writing for my withered ego. To show Newton, Elmo, Rakwana and all the other pretenders what it is to really write about cricket.

Most times I feel I am writing for Garfield and little Jim Laker, for them to know that there can be greatness in the world and that if they avoid being like me, they may be part of it. Or for Sheila and Ari and Jonny to know that I didn’t just waste my time drinking and causing fights.

Picture Darwin. Old, grey, bearded. How you would picture God, the very fellow they claim Darwin tried to replace. Picture Cary Grant. Suave, debonair, dashing. How you would picture James Bond who Grant almost played.

Grant died aged eighty-two, Darwin was seventy-three when he passed on. Why do we remember one as an old man and the other as a dapper fellow? Who is in control of our legacies and is there any way we can influence them? For those of us who are neither movie stars nor scientific visionaries, I fear the answer may be no.

I wish to be remembered on the cover of
TIME
holding aloft my Olympic gold. For the 6 that I hit off the last ball. For the joke I told that everyone laughed at.

But what if I am remembered as the drunk who insulted his sister-in-law? As the coward who hid under the bed when the burglars came? As the man who was always clean bowled first ball?

There are some days, when the sun hits my window and the birds are silent and my fingers hover over the keys like God moving over the water’s face, when I feel I am writing a glorious symphony for the whole world to close their eyes to. But sadly those days are too few and too far between.

Mathew didn’t just lose me a job, he also lost me my chance at an extra income.
Kreeda,
a magazine I helped found, was banned by the government because I couldn’t resist writing a piece on the Asgiriya test. The magazine was shut down and I made fresh enemies.

Enemies appear to be what Pradeep and I have in common. Pradeep fought with two captains, six coaches, three vice captains and at least one cricket administrator. But according to Charith, Reggie, Amalean and the GLOB, his only true nemesis was Zimbabwean Anton Rose.

Certain cricketers are unlucky to have been born where they were. Astounding talents like Bevan, Slater and McGill would have been national greats had they come from anywhere other than Australia. At present they may be unable to enjoy full international careers due to the cluster of talent that is Australia.

If Pradeep Mathew was one cricketer disadvantaged by the country of his birth, the Zimbabwean Anton Rose was another. The boy from Bulawayo lost his farm and his career to the Mugabe regime. It is another of cricket’s tragedies.

Every skill in cricket can be taught, but timing is a gift from God. To know the nanosecond when the willow should be applied to leather to bring forth the sweetest music and the most wondrous stroke. Only a few have that. Sathasivam did, Viv Richards did, and so did the great Anton Rose.

If Mathew was cursed for his race and his temperament, then Rose had a very different curse.

‘For each ball, Rose had five or six different shots,’ says Amalean. ‘Only great players have this. But then after he reached thirty-six, he would hit every ball to the fielder.’

‘Rose is the only batsman Pradeep never conquered,’ says Charith.

‘Others, even if they hammered, he would revenge. Rose could pick every variation.’

Throughout Booth Beckmann’s biography Rose cites Pradeep as the bowler he most enjoyed playing against. ‘Only one bowler could really challenge me. Mathew from Sri Lanka. But I think I got the better of him.’

Beckmann’s book depicts an ambitious man of principle, a perfectionist prone to depression. It is the most candid cricket biography I have read, and it is a scathing attack on Pradeep’s perceived gamesmanship and lack of sportsmanship.

‘He would never be great, because he was not a good character. He is an example to all youngsters on how to waste talent,’ says Rose in Chapter 17.

There is a mythical story of two nineteenth-century planters, one Englishman and one Burgher, who would meet on different Ceylon hills on June’s longest day and challenge each other to 5-over games. Each had plantation workers who would field for them. Only the two planters would bat or bowl. Their first game would have been the world’s first recorded limited-overs game, had anyone bothered to record it.

Like the Devil and the Wandering Jew meeting in an East End tavern once every century. They would play till sunset and the loser of the most games would treat the victor to dinner and drinks at the local planters’ club.

Legend has it that every planters’ bungalow from Hatton to Diyatalawa has the score carved into one of its trees. Those who remember the story have no idea where the trees are. I do remember seeing ‘England 7–Ceylon 5. Jun ’46’ carved into a jacaranda tree, though I cannot remember if it was in Maskeliya or Hatton.

Rose was largely responsible for Pradeep Mathew’s figures of 0–218. They are the worst figures in cricket history, though even that record no longer appears to exist. I know that Mathew recovered from this thrashing to dismiss Rose in the final test for a duck. And that it was the beginning of a slump that would end Rose’s career. And eventually Mathew’s.

All my witnesses remember the vicious sledging that went on between them, but no one remembers what caused it. After his wife was attacked in their Harare home, Rose left Zimbabwe and cricket and became an exiled critic of Robert Mugabe. After extorting NZ$278,000, Pradeep Mathew disappeared to somewhere no one knows.

I sometimes conjure up my own mythical match. Played on the fields of Europe and America, from Budapest to Texas, from Berlin to Caracas. Once every ten years, cricket exiles Anton Rose and Pradeep Mathew meet to settle who is the greatest unsung. The fielders who do not bat and bowl are illegal refugees from both their troubled nations. Loser pays for catering.

Mathew bowls, Rose bats. In between unplayable googly and deft leg glance, they sledge each other, though more in the manner of bitter uncles than young hotheads.

‘Next year I will play for English counties. After that I will play for England. Where will you be?’

Mathew will trundle in, wave his spider-like limbs and bowl a darter or a boru ball or a double bounce ball, and Rose will be bowled.

Mathew will smile and adjust his headband. ‘I will always be on a green field bowling a ball that you will have no answer for.’

A follow-on is when a team falls woefully short of its opponent and is invited to bat again. It’s the winning side sneering, ‘Go on. Have another. Bet you still can’t catch us.’ If the opposing side fails, it is called an innings defeat, the worst possible ignominy for a team playing test cricket.

While the team following on is usually fighting for dear life, the follow-on is also a chance for redemption, to undo the mistakes of the first innings. More often than not, the team following on loses the test. But there have been some spectacular exceptions.

I saw it on two occasions. And for that I am grateful. At Asgiriya in 1987 and at Kettarama in 1991. It is undoubtedly the strangest ball ever invented. The mystery of mystery balls. A ball that bounces and changes direction
twice.

A 5 ounce, spherical, leather-bound object made to behave like a pebble skimming water.

Reggie Ranwala says that Pradeep bowled two consecutively against Anton Rose in 1994 and that both were declared no-balls. We have footage of Mercantile Credit vs Sathosa, 1986. Premlal Fernando and Basil Goonatilaka were bowled by double bounce balls.

Newton claims he helped perfect it in 1993 and that there is nothing illegal about a ball that bounces twice. Gokulanath said he knew how to bowl it, though he could not show us.

I remember it in the Bloomfield vs Nomads game 1994, perhaps Mathew’s second greatest performance. I was with Ari and Renga. Every over Renga reminded us that the young new batsman was his nephew Marvan Arnold. Short ball outside leg. Arnold pulled at thin air. Ball cut to his off, pitched, bounced into the wicket. Renga swore.

‘I’ve never seen anything like that,’ said Ari.

‘That’s the best ball I’ve ever seen,’ said I.

We turned to Renga.

He scowled and pretended to write in his notepad. ‘I’ve seen better,’ he said.

The SSC is festooned in blue.

‘They’re all here today, mate.’

The man who greets me is Sid Barnes, member of Bradman’s Invincibles. He wears a grin and sunglasses and carries two baskets. He was called Suicide Sid because he used to field close without helmet or box. Not because he suffered from bipolar disorder and overdosed on barbiturates in ’73.

The stadium is crowded and I see no Jonny, but I do see Ari.

‘What are you doing in my dream?’ I ask.

‘This is not a dream, Putha. This is a hallucination.’

‘There is a difference?’

‘Dreams are when you sleep. You are in a coma with your eyes open.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘Two bottles yesterday?’

‘My level is five drinks.’

‘Why call it a level when you don’t stick to it?’

On the field Pakistan is playing Sri Lanka – well, that is what the colours tell me. But while the bowler in green is positively Imran Khan, the batsman appears to be Sri Lanka’s current president in a blue sari. There are pictures of her hanging from the rafters.

‘Is this a match or a political rally?’

‘This is the ‘99 World Cup final.’

‘But they haven’t played it yet.’

A tall white man approaches and tries to sell us kadale. I recognise him as I shoo him away.

‘Hey, Jack Iverson,’ shouts Ari. ‘Come back. I’ll buy your kadale.’

‘You’re in the kadale business now?’ I ask, but Iverson does not respond.