The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (8 page)

Ari has even collected school cricket reports. We dig out three mentions of Mathew. This time playing U-15 and then U-17 for Thurstan. ‘Here, my dear. Thurstan vs DS, Astra Margarine U-15 trophy 1979. Thurstan takes first innings lead, P. Mathew takes 4 for 17.’

‘Ariya-pala-rala…’

My voice is slurring and my motor skills are waning.

Ari frowns. ‘I think it’s time for your nap, Putha. And I think Sheila knows that you’re boozing during the day.’

‘She said something?’

‘Manouri saw her throwing out bottles. How much are you whacking?’

Ariyaratne uses his three-year head start in life and the size of his brood to put the fatherly act on me. Like any brat worth his salt, I know how to change the subject.

‘We have no records of Mathew playing 1st XI cricket? Here. Thurstan team profiles for ’82 and ’83. No Mathew.’

‘That is the thing. I know the Thurstan coach, Lucky Nanayakkara. Maybe I can put a call to see if he’s still around. Now kindly go wash your face before Sheila gets back. I will only help you if you behave.’

I make the Scout’s honour sign and promise.

The good news is I have finished most of the scripts and the questionnaires and both Ari and Brian are pleased with the results. I explain that my Mathew piece is incomplete and that I need more time.

I call up the accountant at the
Observer
to check if I have any outstanding pension or gratuity. I am informed that after all deductions have been made, the
Observer
owes me Rs 695.63. I ask him what I could do with that princely sum and he tells me I can buy a bottle of arrack or take out a classified ad in that Sunday’s issue.

So that’s exactly what I do. The latter.

I wish I was known by my initials. Like F.C. de Saram and C.I. Gunasekera, Lanka’s first great batsmen. Or D.S. de Silva, Lanka’s last great spinner. Like T.S. Eliot. D.H. Lawrence. Even O.J. Simpson.

My name is Wijedasa Gamini Karunasena. My mother and sister call me Sudu; my three brothers no longer call me. Strangers call me Karunasena; friends call me Wije. My wife calls me Gamini dear when she wants money and unprintable things when I don’t give it to her. But, regrettably and unfortunately, no one calls me by my initials.

If they did, I would share my name with the greatest cricketer of the nineteenth century, Dr W.G. Grace, undoubtedly the game’s first hero, and perhaps, something of an arse. ‘They came to see me bat, not to watch you umpire.’ It’s an old joke. Sobers never was sober. W.G. did not have any grace.

Dr Grace toured Ceylon in 1891 and in an after-dinner speech at the Grand Orient Hotel expressed the hope that the island would some day send a mixed team of Ceylonese and Europeans to play at Lord’s. The good doctor’s wishes took eighty-three years to come true, though by this time the island was no longer Ceylon and the team no longer had room for Europeans.

W.G. may not roll off the tongue, but I like how it sounds. Come W.G., let’s put a drink. W.G. at your service, madam. I’m sorry, Mr W.G., but we cannot refund your bet.

Sadly, the only place my initials appear is where I place them myself. At the tail end of my articles. And at the end of the ad that I put in the
Sunday Observer
classifieds:

This ad runs in January of 1996. There is a response, though not perhaps the desired one. I rerun it a year later with one amendment. At the end I add the line: Callers will receive payment.

The pressing question of the moment is not what the ad did. It is how the hell did the self-proclaimed W.G., unable to foot the bill for his son’s education, manage to pay for months of advertising and for cash rewards? How could I do all this and finance an arrack habit on just my humble pension? Sheila has come in to sweep the room. I will tell you later.

‘Buck up. Buck up!’

Lucky Nanayakkara’s voice is a shade of ebony. It is as polished as the pipe he puffs and as rich as the tobacco he burns. The boy who spilled the catch looks at his feet. ‘Dodanwela! Third one today, no? Go practise with Dixon Sir.’

The youngster shuffles to the seventh circle of fielders, to join his butterfingered brothers.

‘See,’ says Nanayakkara. ‘Every season I get forty ten-year-olds. Every season I get exactly five natural cricketers and nine who can’t catch. Every year.’

We are sitting in the Royal College pavilion watching a Thurstan U-11 fielding practice. It is a sweaty afternoon and I am offered Lanka Lime from the nearby canteen. I have not had alcohol in over fourteen hours, but my hand does not shake.

Lucky Sir teaches religious studies and is master-in-charge of cricket at Thurstan College. From the scorer’s desk, we have a good view of the nets and the seven circles of fielders.

‘Nothing like the start of the season. If I’m lucky I can pick the future stars.’

The boys have switched from high catches to ground fielding. The sun beats down hard. Another boy misses a catch. Lucky Sir puffs gusts of smoke and clears his throat. ‘This year looks like pickings are slim.’

A troupe of cubs dressed like the Hitler Youth march the boundary lines, chanting nonsense. Mild traffic passes by on Reid Avenue. Lucky Sir presents me with scorebooks from the 1976/77 to 1980/81 seasons. They are fat and rectangular and look like faded canvases. We run our fingers along the creases and skim over smudged dots and dashes of ink.

‘I remember this fellow Mathew. Very good talent. He went on to play for Sri Lanka also.’

He gives me a did-you-know-that look and I give him a yes-I-did nod. According to the books, Mathew was a regular in the Thurstan U-15 and U-17 A-teams, appearing to open both the bowling and the batting. His batting average rarely rose above his age, but his bowling figures showed him to be a strike bowler, expensive, yet effective. A best of 8–120 vs Zahira and no less than seven 5-wicket bags.

‘Lucky Sir, I’m writing about great cricketers who played for Lanka. It says here that Mathew opened the bowling. You opened with a spinner?’

Mr Lucius pats down his parted white hair and rubs his pencil-thin mousto. I like this man; he is, like me, a gentle lover of cricket. Since 1996 the game has attracted a mass market of dabblers and dilettantes who are very vocal on the obvious points and not very knowledgeable on the finer ones. Sadly, some of them sit in the commentary box.

‘No. No. He. used to bowl pace. Actually he could bowl swing, off break and leg spin. Anything. Not medium pace, mind you, full dum pace. Like Waqar.’

He tells me that P. Sivanathan was one of seven Tamil boys in a school of 2,500 pupils. According to Lucky Sir’s astonishing memory, during the late 1970s there were seventeen Muslims, two Burghers and one Chinese at Thurstan College. These pupils were excused from Buddhist prayers and occasionally bullied on the playground.

‘He was about Grade 3. Crying away. Unfortunately, Thurstan gets some rough types. A bunch of them were throwing fruit at him, calling him Tamil kotiya. This is a good school, but things can happen.’

The bullies had been asking him if he was Tamil or Burgher. Pradeep’s reply had been, ‘Amma Sinhala.’ My mother is Sinhala.

‘He couldn’t even speak proper Tamil. I punished all the fellows. Told Sivanathan to get his parents to complain. They never did. Next time I saw him was at the U-11 trials. Mousey fellow. Took the ball and… my God.’

Lucky Sir drafted the boy into the U-13 squad. Pradeep could not catch, neither was he a natural athlete. But he was certainly a star.

‘He could imitate any action, no? After the boys saw him bowl, the bullying stopped.’

After Grade 5, as classes were shuffled to accommodate scholarship children, on Lucky Sir’s advice P. Sivanathan was enrolled as Pradeep Mathew in a parallel class.

‘We can’t change the world, no? I told him to stay out of trouble. To concentrate on hard work, doing the basics. Sometimes, fellow would listen.’

Pradeep began deflecting tormentors by imitating their bowling actions. He became the first to be picked during interval cricket, but remained the last to be invited to parties.

‘Sir Garfield Sobers came and coached our youngsters for a week. He said this boy will play for Sri Lanka.’

The mention of Sir Garfield reminds me of a son who bats like a girl and can barely bowl slow.

‘What a waste. If Pradeepan played our Big Match we would’ve won.’

The Thurstan–Isipathana Big Match has not had a result in twenty-three years.

‘Why didn’t he?’

When Pradeep failed his O-levels, his Sinhala mother and Tamil father visited the school for the first time.

‘Father was quiet. Mother said no way. No more cricket. He was sent for tuition, but I don’t think he went.’

‘What did he bowl? Left-arm spin or left-arm pace?’

Mr Lucius puts down his Portello and shakes his head. Our drinks are fresh from cool storage; they begin sweating on arrival.

‘You will not believe me, Mr Karunasena, you will think I am bowling you a googly. Ha. But when he was at Thurstan, he bowled right-arm.’

For the first time that day, I stop thinking about the half-bottle of Mendis rum stuffed in my almirah.

‘Ah?’

‘I know he played for All-Ceylon as a left-arm spinner, but for us he was a right-arm fast bowler. He was pretty quick and accurate, but not much stamina. Fellow gets tired, bowls spin. Right-arm leg spin and googlies. Gets hammered sometimes, but picks up wickets also.’

While it is possible to be competent with both hands in a given activity, ambidexterity works on the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-jack principle.

If you teach yourself to write left-handed your right-handed writing will deteriorate. If you practise both regularly, neither will attain excellence.

It may be possible to roll over the arm without being no-balled and hit a point on a pitch. But to hurl a cricket ball at speed or to spin it across its axis with either arm to a level sufficient to dismiss a Sri Lanka school batsman would require near-super powers.

My Lanka Lime tastes like chilled food colouring. Lucky Sir offers me biscuits and I decline. I do not understand why biscuits are considered good things to put in your mouth. The sun lowers the heat and the boys come in for tea.

‘Adihetty. Very poor. Buck up. Buck up!’ Lucky Sir gets into master-in-charge mode.

‘Did you meet him when he played for Sri Lanka?’

‘Sometimes. In the early days he would drop in. I said, son you have a talent, work every day at it. Fellow was lazy.’

Lucky Sir’s rich ebony voice blends well with the fading light. The boys who missed catches begin running their laps of penance along the boundary ropes.

‘I would advise him on variations. He listened, same expression, like he’s not listening. Then he’d bowl a brilliant ball, but not the ball I asked him to bowl.’

I close the tattered scorebooks, they have nothing more to tell.

‘So how did he go from U-17 to playing for Sri Lanka without 1st XI cricket?’

Lucky Sir gathers the scorebook and looks around.

‘He might have unofficially played for the Royal 1st XI.’ He pats down his hair and winks. ‘But I did not tell you that.’

Consider these facts:

• In 1983, a team of West Indian rebels toured apartheid South Africa.
  
• In 1983, Pradeep Mathew may or may not have played 1st XI cricket for Royal.
  
• In 1983, the Tamil Tigers sank a Sri Lankan army boat. The ensuing riots by Sinhalese mobs ensured that over the next decade (a) 80,000 lives would be lost and (b) Sri Lanka would only play ten home test matches.
  
• In 1983, Royal won the Royal–Thomian cricket match for the first time in fifteen years.
  
• After seven years of Grand Slam glory, Björn Borg lost his confidence and retired aged twenty-six.
  
• In 1983, India snatched the World Cup from Clive Lloyd’s invincible Windies in classic underdog fashion.
  
• That year, I wrote an uncomplimentary article about Indian cricket and Kapil Dev refused to be interviewed by me.
  

My phone starts ringing at 6 a.m. I hear it as if in another room, my conscious mind misted by the fumes of evaporated rum. My body aches and my head is nailed to my pillow. The phone keeps ringing. I hear Sheila mumbling, asking, replying, snapping, screaming, shrieking. I pick out random words. ‘Y2K… Millennium Bug… Y2Komputers… Pradeep Mathew…’

I turn over, cover my ears and part my eyelids. Sheila is lying on her side snarling into the phone. It rings as soon as she puts it down.

‘Listen. You… you… f… f… fellow. I told you no Millennium bugging.’

Next caller.

‘Who is this… There is no b… blooming Pradeep Sivanathan… Kindly stop calling.’

She slams down the phone and I jolt awake. She glares. She is in her nightdress and even though she is shaped more like an alarm clock than an hourglass, I see beauty in her. When she glares, her eyes shine and her skin glows, and the girl who I followed on a bus to Kotahena in ’64 barks at me in her sweet voice. ‘Did you put some ad in the papers about Y2K or Millennium something?’