The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

by Shehan Karunatilaka

  We aren’t the only ones heading to the Taj Renaissance Presidential Suite. We share the lift with Hashan Mahanama and career reserve Charith Silva, both a year away from being immortalised as members of the ’96 world-conquering squad. They are flanked by no less than five young lasses. All with straightened hair, knee-length skirts and varying degrees of make-up.

  The security guards body-search me and Ari, and leer at the display of thigh and cleavage that they are forbidden to touch. Silva and Mahanama, knowing that they know me from somewhere, give me the tiniest of nods before shepherding their harem from the lift.

  ‘You bugger,’ says Ari as we enter the darkened room. ‘This is a bloody opium den.’

  ‘Just go, men,’ I say, walking past supine bodies and crimson lampshades. The air is filled with smoke and desperation and the thump of something resembling music. Ari is prone to melodrama.

  ‘If I didn’t know better, Wije, I’d say we were at a party. As my daughters would say, we are crashing the gate. Are you sure this is…’

  ‘Fellow told me 10 at Taj Presidential Suite,’ I say, pasting a smile on my face to mask my terror at being surrounded by women in various states of undress. We elbow our way through the corridor, glancing at the populated rooms. In some, people are sitting on rugs and puffing on teapots made of glass. In others, strobe lights are flashing reds and pinks and a man with headphones is scraping a table.

  ‘You wan tequila?’ She is Chinese and blonde and wearing boots and shorts. Her friend looks East European and is wearing no bra.

  ‘Tequila. Tequila. Gimme. Gimme,’ says the Russian. She looks at us.

  ‘Uncle. Ko-he-ma-da?’

  ‘Kohee-meedi…’ mimics Marilyn Ming-Roe. They both giggle.

  Ari and I down the shots.

  ‘You no take lime and salt?’

  Unsure what to do in these situations, I look her square in the breast and grin like a goon.

  Ari takes charge. ‘Is Graham Snow here?’

  ‘Ah, you friend of Graham? We take you,’ says the Russian.

  ‘Graham is not in good mood,’ says her companion, sucking on a lime.

  We pass through rooms where expensive bottles of vodka are being emptied down unappreciative throats. Where young men and younger women wiggle to bone-rattling noise. I fancy I spy some famous faces, many, like me, much too old to be here. The Russian leads us up a spiral stairway to a garden on the roof.

  Gusts of cool breeze take the sweat from our shirts. To our left is the open space of Galle Face Green with the Indian Ocean curling at its feet. To our right, a troubled city of lights and silence. A more spectacular view of Colombo I am yet to see.

  Perched alone next to a table of bottles, puffing on a crumpled cigarette, is Gatsby himself, Mr Graham Robin Snow. He raises a solitary eyebrow.

  ‘Oh right.’ He rises. A giant in a batik shirt and a straw hat.

  ‘Sirisena! Bring another chair.’

  He squeezes our hands and avoids our eyes. He motions for us to sit and looks down at his slippered feet. ‘Didn’t know there’d be two of you.’

  ‘This is Ari Byrd. My statistician.’

  Unimpressed, Snow begins pouring vodka. ‘Drink?’

  A man with muscles in a white T-shirt enters carrying chairs.

  ‘Siri, bring some ice, will ya?’ Snow’s voice rises with each sentence. ‘Siri, I can smell fucking dope. I caught two of them having it off in these bushes. Tell Upul no fucking dope and no fucking fucking! I’ll kick everyone out.’

  Rambo scrambles down and barks orders at an unseen security guard.

  We sit with our drinks, next to one of the greatest English cricketers of the 1970s.

  ‘Are you married?’ he asks. We both nod.

  ‘Happily married?’ Ari nods slightly more vigorously than I do.

  ‘It’s easy for you chaps. No offence. But you don’t have women throwing themselves at you all around the world.’

  I look at Ari, who looks at me.

  ‘I just didn’t think she’d leave.’

  And then the man who demolished Kim Hughes’s Australians in ’81 begins sobbing into his vodka tonic.

  Nineteen Eighty-five

  The very first time I see him bowl is on Jonny’s massive TV during the 1985 Benson & Hedges World Series. That’s when Pradeep gets me sacked from the Island.

  I can blame it on the stakes.

  On Jonny’s coffee table stands a bottle of Chivas, a bottle of Gordon’s and a bottle of Old Reserve. The winner gets all three, certainly a prize worth fighting for, but perhaps not worth losing one’s job over.

  Jonny Gilhooley, Cultural Attaché at Colombo’s British High Commission, receives his stipend in pounds. He donates the Chivas. Ari receives rupees like I do, and a meagre sum at that. But he does not wish to appear ungracious and pledges an expensive gin. I have little money and less grace. The arrack is my contribution.

  Jonny refuses to discuss his life before Sri Lanka. We secretly suspect he may be a Cold War spy in hiding.

  ‘Jonny, are you a Cold War spy in hiding?’

  After four pints of ale, Ari tends to forget what is secret and what isn’t.

  ‘Aye, bonnie lad,’ says Jonny. ‘And I’m also the bastard who’s gonna take home ya bottles!’

  The bet is not on who will win. In 1985, there is only one answer to that. The team that isn’t Sri Lanka.

  ‘Absholutely shuperb delivery.’

  We stop our chatter and gawk at the TV. Is Richie Benaud saying something nice about Sri Lanka?

  ‘P.S. Mathew’s figures are not flattering. 7 overs. None for 51. But thish over hash been as good as I’ve sheen from a left-arm chinaman bowler.’

  I will no longer reproduce the quirks of Benaud’s speech. I wouldn’t want to offend the great all-rounder. Ari, on the other hand, has no such qualms.

  ‘This pious bugger gets on my nerves.’

  On the giant TV in this air-conditioned room, Sri Lanka is suffering its seventh successive thrashing of the year. We will go on to be soundly beaten five times by Border’s Australians and five times by Lloyd’s West Indies. But never more soundly than the match that day.

  The TV is the size of half a cinema. When Jonny got promoted from press officer, he insisted on a cinema room, pointing out at high-flown meetings, in hifalutin tones, that screenings of French new wave and German expressionist films at the Alliance Française and the Goethe Institute were popular with middle-class Sri Lankans.

  A sports fan like us, Jonny rigged the screen to the MI6 satellite and got live feeds of cricket, football, rugby and tennis. Taking advantage of unspent budgets and absent high commissioners, he equipped the room with soundproofing, a well-stocked bar and plush sofas.

  Jonny always invited me and Ari over to the High Commission to watch live games and let us booze and shout abuse at the large screen.

  And in 1985, Ari and I do both in abundance. We also play silly games. Like the Seamless Paki, a contest of who could construct the longest sequence of overlapping Pakistani cricketers’ names. At the time of writing, Ari is reigning champ for ‘Saqlain Mushtaq Mohammad Wasim Akram Raza’.

  Today’s bet has to do with our favourite commentator, Graham Snow. The only one who has nice things to say about Sri Lanka.

  ‘I’m with ya, Aree mate. Benaud’s a tosser,’ says Jonny. Jonny’s accent is a mixture of Geordie and Punjabi, two very similar dialects spoken by two very dissimilar people. On screen, with Australia 262–1 off 37 overs, Richie Benaud does not respond.

  Black and white photographs adorn the lime walls. Lord Mountbatten, Sir Oliver Goonatileke, Queen Elizabeth, Sir Richard Attenborough, the current High Commissioner. The air conditioner is set to just right.

  ‘I say wicket this over,’ says Ari. ‘Loser serves drinks.’

  The Island editor had insisted I hand in my match report by midnight. I make a mental note to depart early. And then Mathew bowls a perfect googly.

  Anticipating the off break, Dean
Jones dances down the pitch, his sunglasses glinting. The ball pitches on middle and leg and cuts sharply into the gloves of keeper Amal Silva, who whips off the bails. Jones out for 99.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ squeals Ari. ‘OK. Jonny, for calling the great Richie a tosser. Gin for me, arrack for Wije and make yourself something nice.’

  Ari turns his thinning head of hair towards me. ‘I say, who is this fellow?’

  ‘Pradeep Mathew. Our latest partner for DS.’

  The veteran leg spinner D.S. de Silva was in his forties when Sri Lanka gained test status. The 1985 series was his swansong. It would be ten years before Sri Lanka had a regular wicket-taking spinner in the side. In the decade in between, we experimented with seventeen different ones.

  When Mathew removes Allan Border’s leg stump with what can only be described as a slow, reverse-swinging yorker, the three of us scream. The ball, curling in the air from off to leg and snaking under Border’s bat, causes Richie Benaud to launch into uncharacteristic hyperbole.

  ‘That’sh one of the mosht amazing deliveries I’ve sheen.’

  Inside the soundproof cinema room there is the din of three men cheering lustily. A change in commentary: Benaud is replaced by Bill Lawry and former England captain Graham Snow.

  I cast the first stone. ‘For this session, three.’

  Jonny chuckles. ‘You must be barmy. If this spinner takes another wicket, he’ll do at least seven.’

  Ari has a notepad ready. ‘OK, gentlemen. Round 4. How many times will Graham Snow say ‘these little Sri Lankans’? Wije three? Jonny seven? I’ll say five. Starting now.’

  ‘Morning, Graham. Morning, all,’ says Bill Lawry.

  We wait with bated breath.

  ‘Morning, Bill,’ says Graham.

  ‘Interesting passage of play here. Can Australia make it to 300?’

  ‘I tell you what. These little Shree Lankans are finally putting up a fight.’

  We clink our glasses and growl.

  ‘And it’s all thanks to this young man, Mathew. He’s bowled a blinder.’

  David Boon misjudges the flight of a wayward chinaman and spoons a catch to Madugalle. Australia 277–5. We gape at the screen.

  ‘Another one! That’s his third. Look at these figures. First spell, nothing to write home about. But this spell. 3 overs. 3 for 4.’

  ‘Well, not being unkind, Graham, but till the last hour, this Sri Lankan team has been nothing to write home about. Comprehensively beaten in seven matches.’

  Ari takes a swig of his scotch and then winces, realising Jonny has forgotten the ice and the soda.

  ‘Blow it out your arse, Bill,’ sneers Jonny. ‘How boring was he? Worse than bloody Boycott.’

  ‘You’re talking rot,’ I say. ‘I saw Lawry stand up to a blitz from Trueman and Statham at Lord’s. He was class.’

  ‘You applying for an Aussie visa, WeeGee?’ Jonny winks at Ari.

  ‘I have no intention of leaving this miserable isle.’

  ‘Wije. Stop bullshitting, men,’ says Ari. ‘Bill Lawry was a corpse with pads.’

  At that moment, with the score on 290, the corpse bursts to life. ‘GOT HIM! What a ball! Young Mathew traps Simon O’Donnell leg before.’

  ‘That was a top spinner,’ Graham Snow observes. ‘I tell you what. This boy has them all. Chinaman, googly, top spinner and that amazing arm ball that got rid of the Aussie captain.’

  Australia end up on 323 for 7. Snow says the phrase seven times during that session and twenty-three times for the whole game. Jonny wins the round, but I win the three bottles. Ari’s scoring system is as mystical as the Duckworth–Lewis. I will not even attempt an explanation.

  Mathew adds Kepler Wessels to his 5 scalps for 65 runs, but Sri Lanka can only muster a paltry 91, with only two batsmen reaching double figures. It is Sri Lanka’s heaviest defeat.

  The next day’s newspapers lament our dismal batting. None mention Mathew’s 5–65. The Island’s match report would have, had its writer handed in his copy on time.

  The Shrink

  All credit should go to Ari. While I pour the vodka, he sits with his arm around our host, sharing a cigarette and his secrets to happiness.

  ‘Graham, I have always admired your grit.’

  When Ari says it, it doesn’t sound like brown-nosing.

  ‘You weren’t the most talented, but you were the toughest. The only fellow to stand up to that Lillee and Thompson.’

  As I gaze at Colombo’s rooftops, from the corner of my eye I spy Graham burying his head in his palms. How drunk is he and why is he discussing his marital problems with two strangers?

  ‘Glenda has left. My boys ignore me. SevenSports may not renew my contract. That’s it, I suppose,’ he sobs.

  ‘Stop this nonsense, Graham. Don’t become a spectacle.’ Ari is strict. ‘Who are these people downstairs?’

  ‘The Indians paid for the party.’

  ‘What Indians?’ I ask.

  ‘From NSPN. A sponsorship deal for the World Cup.’

  I decide to join the group therapy session. ‘See, Mr Snow. NSPN! What is SevenSports? People respect you. Make cricket the centre of your life. And everything will follow.’

  Ari glares at me. ‘Wije. Don’t talk crap. Make God and your family the centre. What is cricket?’

  ‘Good advice,’ I say. ‘Except for two things. His family hate him. And God doesn’t exist.’

  White T-shirt Rambo interrupts what could have escalated into World War III. With him is a middle-aged man wearing a tie and a just-been-dragged-out-of-bed expression. ‘Mr Graham. Dr Nalaka is here.’

  The man blushes, scratches the back of his head, and then extends a limp wrist. ‘You called for a psychiatrist. I am Dr Nalaka. Sri Jayawardenapura Hospital. I don’t usually do night calls…’

  ‘You’re the shrink?’ Graham Snow looks at me and Ari. ‘Then who are these jokers?’

  I flash my old press pass like a cop with a badge. ‘W.G. Karunasena, Sportstar magazine.’

  Ari bows. ‘Ari Byrd. Scientist. Statistician.’ He extends his hands like a preacher.

  And then the man who had been sobbing just ten minutes earlier bursts into uncontrollable laughter.

  Till the Ship Sails

  6 balls make an over. 50 overs, or 300 balls, give or take, make a one-day game innings.

  In a test match, each team bats twice. An innings ends when ten batsmen are out or when the batting captain declares the innings closed. This is not measured in overs, but in days.

  From the dawn of cricket till the late 1930s, when yours truly was still a toddler chasing lizards in Kurunegala, test matches were timeless, played till both sides were bowled out twice. At first, games did not last longer than seventy-two hours, but then, as the sciences of batting and pitch making developed, matches began to stretch to four, five, sometimes six days.

  In 1938 a test between South Africa and England went on for nine days and remained unfinished. Pursuing 696, England had to stop their run chase at 654–5 as their ship back to Blighty was ready to leave. After that, test matches were restricted to five days. Some say they are still too long; I think they are just right.

  These Little Shree Lankans

  ‘I’ll tell you what I love about you Shree Lankans?’

  The shrink has been paid a consultancy fee and sent home while we do his job for him. We help Graham through the first bottle and most of his depression. His wife had caught him with a barmaid in the West Indies and left, leaving a hole in his life that no amount of parties in presidential suites or sponsorship deals could fill.

  ‘You’re passionate about the game, but you’re also easy-going. The Indians and the Pakis have gone absolutely bananas.’

  It is November of 1995. Little do we all know that in less than six months Sri Lanka would also be going bananas. In the preceding year, Sri Lanka had won their first series overseas, humbling Craig Turner’s New Zealanders, and had become the first team to beat Pakistan at home in fiftee
n years. Later this year they would travel to Australia, where Darrell Hair would no-ball Murali for chucking, setting in motion a chain of events that would climax at a World Cup final in Lahore in March 1996.

  ‘I read all of your articles,’ says Graham. ‘The Times could do with writers like you.’

  I hope he means the Times of London.

  ‘England it’s all Cantona and Mansell. No one gives a flying fuck about cricket. But suddenly these little Shree Lankans are capturing the imagination of the world.’

  Ari and I chuckle quietly. We decide against telling Graham Snow about our silly game. ‘Sir Richard Hadlee reckons they might grab the Cup. Not sure I’m sure about that…’

  ‘Graham, please.’ I begin counting down my fingers. ‘Look at our batting. Sanath, Kalu, Guru, Aravinda, Arjuna, Roshan, Hashan…’

  ‘Flair at the top, maturity in the middle, discipline lower down,’ Ari says with gusto. ‘And our bowling and fielding are much more focused.’

  ‘For the first time,’ I say, ‘we are real contenders for the Cup.’

  ‘Hmm. You may well be right,’ says Graham. ‘This fella Mathew. Will he play?’

  Ari and I exchange glances. Pradeep Mathew had not played a test since the 1994 Zimbabwe tour. He was a surprise selection for the tour to New Zealand, but did not play a single game. I attempted to contact him when researching the Sportstar article, but the Sri Lanka Board of Control for Cricket, SLBCC, refused to give me his details. He did not play in that year’s domestic season. There were murmurings of a serious injury.

  ‘You know that boy holds the record for best bowling in a one-dayer,’ says Graham.

  ‘You are mistaken,’ says Ari. ‘That is Aaqib Javed with 7 for…’

  ‘7 for 37. Right. Mathew got 8 for 17.’

  ‘Impossible,’ says Ari.

  ‘Wanna bet?’

  ‘You don’t want to bet with me, Mr Graham.’

  ‘Listen,’ says the great man. ‘There are two reasons I called you here. One is for a business proposition. The other is to show you this…’