News

Radically different

16-Dec-2008
It is not too difficult to see why, if Sanath Jayasuriya had not been a cricketer, he would have been an accomplished fencer, sal- lying forth towards his opponent, as he does when he dances down the wicket, with nimbleness of foot and alertness of eye. You can visualise the epee twirling dexterously in his quick hands and sense the swordsman`s acceptance of having his life hang by a string. The qualities of skill and daring form a rare combina- tion, perhaps suited more to a gambler than a top order batsman and yet, to see Jayasuriya bat is to see a finely crafted gambler at work, sensing an opportunity and thriving on it.
Over the last 16 months, Jayasuriya has made the leap that so many cricketers aspire to but rarely can; from being an exciting scene-stealer to playing the lead role. You could sense something was going to happen when he walked out but you could be sure there would be just a few flashes of lightning. The promise of a storm without the dense cloud to back it.
Though he was talked about as a one-day specialist then, he only had a batting average of about 13 and certainly didn`t have enough wickets to justify his presence as a bowler even though he held the best bowling figures by a Sri Lankan in one-day cricket. It was tempting to label Jayasuriya as someone who could neither bat nor bowl well enough. Or at any rate, consistently enough.
Unlike men of destiny who make their future, Jayasuriya seemed to wait for fortune to stop by. As any sportsman will tell you, it only happens rarely, and crucial years of youth passed by, taking away opportunity and a fair chunk of hair. Then suddenly, the wheel of fortune stopped alongside him. At Bloemfontein, the heart of rightwing Afrikaner territory, Jayasuriya first rode the crest of a new revolution. Opening the batting against New Zea- land, he scored 140, his first limited overs century. It also made him the record-holder for the highest individual score in one-day internationals by a Sri Lankan and while that didn`t make him a great batsman overnight, it meant that he was up above such outstanding talents as Roy Dias and Aravinda de Silva. A wanderer in search of home had found it; at the top of the order.
In the next few months, Jayasuriya waded into opposition attacks not with the fluency of the swordsman but with the bluntness of a battle tank. The guns boomed for a while but he was also an easy target and the opposition waited for him to shoot himself. In- variably he did. Until the tour of Australia late last year. On the bouncy tracks that had exposed so many before him. Jayasuriya discovered that he loved the ball coming onto him. Better still, he relished the challenge of aggressive cricketers and hostile officials and his century in the last Test at Perth was a wonder- ful innings studded with bold shots and marked by a refreshing absence of orthodoxy.
Too often, batsmen tend to be predictable, playing a ball as the manual suggests. Bowlers don`t mind bowling to such batsmen be- cause they can work out the best way to attack them. But here was a batsman who believed strokes were meant to be played even in the Test match theatre and who was just as much at home driving through cover on the rise as he was pulling in front of square. He had begun to like fast bowlers and they had started discover- ing a distaste for him. Subtly, quite unlike the manner in which he plays his cricket, the balance was tilting.
And then came the World Cup. And Delhi. Jayasuriya made 79 from 76 balls, a pedestrian pace by recent standards but his partner- ship with Kaluwitharna had redefined the way the early overs would be played in one-day cricket. Ironically, their batting averages only added up to around 35, the figure you would want a good top order batsman to have.
With batting records falling like rain in a Bombay monsoon, Jayasuriya took on England, a side whose defeats bring a totally inexplicable but perverse joy to most cricket-playing countries. His 82 from 43 balls brought him instant international attention for he was now playing innings that were long enough to win matches on their own. And then came the crucial spell in Calcutta that destroyed India and showed up the Eden Gardens as just another fair weather crowd. That was one of the outstanding bowl- ing performances of the tournament because he bowled the perfect line on a helpful wicket: the sign of a shrewd, think- ing crick- eter.
The World Cup made him a star but there were many including me, who remained a bit sceptical of the Player of the Tournament award. Did he have the substance, one wondered, to win it ahead of Tendulkar or Waugh ? Did he have the statesmanship to play the kind of innings Mark Waugh played at Madras: surely one of the great innings of limited overs cricket ? Did he evoke the same awe as those two ?
If the end of the World Cup, a stunning success for him, still evoked an uncertain response, the picturesque Padang in Singapore provided convincing proof. A century from 48 balls against one of the best attacks in the world had to be something special, ir- respective of the length of the boundary. The world record had gone by 14 balls; a bit like a young upstart coming up and doing seven metres against Sergei Bubka.
Jayasuriya is now writing a new chapter in the short history of the one-day game because he is perfecting a style that is radi- cally different from anything that has come before; a lot more revolutionary than Martin Crowe`s use of Dipak Patel with the new ball in the 1992 World Cup. There is now a new grammar to cricket for underneath this carnage lies a definite pattern.
Even as the fastest 50 appears in the record books what is most awesome is not the power behind the shots but the sense of pred- ictability around the obvious danger of his approach. That is be- cause he picks his spot to hit, sees the ball very early and has the divine ability to find spaces rather than fielders.
As he drives his Audi down past Galle on the road to Matara, Jayasuriya will be aware, being a shrewd cricketer, that cricket- ing brains around the world will be working on how to stop him. At 26, that is a great reputation to have.
If I was Jayasuriya, I`d turn the music on and watch the beauti- ful palms of Sri Lanka.
Source :: Daily News (http.//www.lanka.net)