The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

by Shehan Karunatilaka

  We discuss Lanka’s prospects for the World Cup, followed by the Murali saga. This topic does a couple of rounds and then Gokul speaks. ‘Y’all are Thomians, no?’

  Ari nods his head. I shake mine. ‘Maliyadeva.’

  ‘What I’m telling, please write to papers. And to Thomian magazine. Royal is not good. It is changed. Thirty years and they throw me out, because I am Tamil. Can you believe?’

  I decide to get down to business, before he repeats the story for the third time. ‘Did Pradeep Mathew play for Royal?’

  ‘Pradeepan? Yes, yes. But not in legal way.’

  Ari puts away the bottle and asks, ‘So in what way?’

  And then he tells us.

  Sunscreen

  The story begins in Soysapura Flats in Moratuwa and is punctuated by coughs. The narrator sticks beedis into the gaps in his teeth and draws phlegm from his soul. ‘He told me he went to Royal… urrrgg… so I told him to come for practice.’

  Gokulanath coached six-a-side tennis-ball cricket at the Soysapura grounds, surrounded by balconies of dirty laundry and flats filled with gangsters like Moratu Sumith, Maiyya and Goo Cheena.

  The Soysapura scene was known for its hard-hitting batsmen and bowlers of questionable action. Both Gokul and Pradeep hailed from the flats, though they didn’t meet till Gokul’s Katubedda Kings took on young Pradeep’s Rawatawatte Fingara Club.

  Gokul was immediately impressed. ‘Left-arm seam. Ammataudu. You should’ve seen. Every ball pitching off stump, then doing different things. Cutting in, cutting out, keeping low. Whole afternoon, one spot. Then he bowls right-hand. I couldn’t believe. I have never seen bowling like that.’

  In six-a-side tennis-ball cricket, there really is nowhere for a bowler to hide, but Pradeep ended up getting bounce, turn, and, most importantly, wickets. ‘So I ask him… urrg… why he never come for Royal practice? He tells me his parents send him for tuition.’

  Gokul didn’t realise Mathew was from Thurstan till he had played him in four games for the 2nd XI. ‘But how to sack best bowler I have coached?’

  The boy had put in solid performances as the first change bowler. In the last game before he was found out, Mathew opened the bowling and took 5–39 against St Sylvesters.

  ‘Ari darling. Me and Melissa are going, OK?’ It is the shrill voice of Manouri Byrd. She is peering over round spectacles from the balcony and pretends not to see me. Ari leaves us to go to church. Before he goes, he drags me into his workshop. The fluorescent bulb lights up the rust and the dust, the broken machines and the grounded Ford. He hands me a cassette recorder.

  ‘Here, Wije. This fellow is mad. But in case he says something useful, press that and keep. And don’t give him too much drink. I’m off.’

  ‘What’s that?’ I ask, pointing to a clunky contraption, shaped like a miniature washing machine.

  ‘A 1965 Polaroid 20 Series Swinger. Just 200 bucks from some aachchi in Dehiwela.’

  Only Ari would be proud of robbing old ladies.

  ‘Does it work?’

  He snaps a shot of me placing the tape recorder before Gokul below a darkening sky. The picture that comes out is blank. Ari begins flapping it, then Manouri shouts from the balcony and he runs off. I’m left alone with Gokul.

  I ask what he did when he found out Mathew was a Thurstan boy. ‘I told head coach, there is boy who can be BATA Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year, if we get him to Royal. For once head coach listens to me.’

  Gokulanath then drops ash onto his lap and topples his drink into the rambutan.

  Mathew could not be admitted to Royal due to class overcrowding. The head coach and Gokul set up a Tamil scholarship programme that would… the details fly over my head as Gokul rambles on and clears phlegm from his throat. Suffice to say that it began in October 1982 and was concluded in February 1984, four months after Mathew had passed his London A-levels and was too old to play school cricket.

  Nevertheless, the boy practised with the Royal 1st team squad and our man Gokul got a promotion to 1st XI fielding coach for his find of the season. He claims to have helped Mathew develop his unusual deliveries.

  ‘Tamils have to be twice as good as Sinhalese to be recognised. I played for Jaffna St John’s. I bowled googly. Look at these fingers. I could spin the ball on water. Pradeepan’s were even longer.’

  He wraps his spider-like fingers around his glass and coughs into his other hand. ‘Pradeepan… urrg… no discipline, no control. I told he must empty his head of thoughts. Let the ball come to him. To think of nothing when he lets go.’

  The ’82 season passed without incident. Mathew attended practice, played a few friendlies, worked on his bowling and his fielding, helped along by Mr Gokul. The head coach wouldn’t put him in the side till the deal with Thurstan College, the Royal Admissions Secretariat and the Royal College Scholarship Fund was finalised. The boy told his family he was going to Royal for tuition class. To keep up the façade, Gokul would help him with his homework after practice.

  The ’83 Royal side was captained by Chulaka Algama and was top-heavy with quality all-rounders like Sandesh Jayawardena, Malik Malalasekera and Rochana Amarasinghe. They had three coaches, two specialist trainers and a fitness instructor. The Sri Lankan national team at the time barely had a manager.

  The results were plain to see. The team, overflowing with experience and variety, notched up six consecutive wins against the likes of Isipathana, Richmond and Prince of Wales. Mathew meanwhile had developed the stamina to play as a fast bowler and had perfected the actions of Bob Willis, Mohinder Binny and the entire Royal 1st and 2nd side squads.

  But the fitness instructor’s regimen was starting to reveal cracks. ‘That fitness coach was a pandithaya. Instead of Nihal Sir, we had to call him Sir Nihal. Like he’s some English lord. What fitness? Bugger couldn’t even jog.’ Wrist fractures, ankle injuries, hamstring and groin strains spread through the team like influenza. And in desperation, the head coach turned to Pradeep.

  Ari returns from church just as the story enters the realm of fantasy. ‘Did you pass any holy water, Father Byrd?’ Religion is one of the many topics Ari and I argue over.

  ‘Wije, I told you I don’t like you blaspheming in my garden. Just wait till you’re close to your death, only then you’ll realise the value of God.’

  Poor Ari. I really should tell him.

  As Gokul stumbles to the toilet, Ari points to his nose and waves away a smell. ‘Looks like a bittter bugger. Bittter with three ts. And I don’t accept this right-hand, left-hand bullshit.’

  Mathew featured in four games before the Big Match. Around that time, it was compulsory for every Royal cricketer to wear a large sunhat, cover their face in sunscreen and wear Dean Jones-style shades. The sunglasses offended the visiting Nalanda College coach, who complained to the Sri Lanka Schools Cricket Board, SLSCB. They agreed that sunglasses were unsuitable accessories for school cricket. The sunscreen escaped scrutiny.

  Listen carefully. This is what a drunken bitter ex-schoolmaster is having us believe. Pradeep Mathew appeared for Royal, but not as himself

  In the first match he wore a double T-shirt and played the role of burly pacey Nalliah de Silva. Against Nalanda, he wore a gold chain and mimicked Chanaka Devarajan, de Silva’s new ball partner. He took four wickets and ripped the spine out of a Nalanda batting line-up featuring future international stars Roshan Gurusinha and Hashan Mahanama.

  In the St Josephs match, he masqueraded as star spinner Rochana Amarasinghe, while his namesake recuperated from an ankle sprain. His spell of 6–72 livened up an otherwise drab game.

  It is now night and Manouri and two of the Byrd girls bring dinner. Manouri smiles at me, the two girls are too busy arguing over some nonsense to notice us. One is tall, the other is plump and I remember neither of their names.

  As we tear into the paratha and prawn curry, I keep grilling our guest.

  ‘Come on, Mr Gokul… surely the opposition can tell if you’re playing an unregist
ered player.’

  Gokul coughs rice back into his spoon. ‘We had so-called Closed Pavilion Policy. Sir Nihal’s idea, what else? Outsiders can’t speak with team. Only master-in-charge, head coach and Sir Nihal could enter dressing room. Sir Nihal said it was for the preparing of the mental. urrg… I knew fishy things were going on.’

  ‘Surely, Mr Gokul… in a Royal–Thomian? The players know each other. They will notice if Gihan Dandeniya is suddenly someone else.’

  The question is mine. Ari, the sceptic, is strangely silent. He has been like this all through dinner. I poke him. ‘Oi. Mr Silent Partner. How?’

  ‘That’s what it was.’ Ari looks me square in the face. ‘They all looked alike. Now I know why. Sunscreen. Bloody sunscreen. Every one of those jokers was covered in that crap…’

  Closed Pavilion Policy

  On the eve of the Royal–Thomian Big Match, six of Royal’s nine coloursmen had injuries. Several all-rounders could only play as batsmen. Some bowlers could hardly play at all. What follows is conjecture, as even Mr Gokulanath was left out of the Closed Pavilion Policy.

  The policy was raising a few eyebrows. The Royalists even asked for a separate entrance to the SSC so as not to fraternise outside of the closed circle.

  ‘There were thirteen players, which included our man Mathew. Then the coach, the manager and Sir Nihal. Everyone thought it was arrogant, but no one questioned. Royal was winning, no?’

  ‘No one else had access to the players?’

  Gokul shakes his head.

  Night descends on de Saram Road and plates are cleared. Gokul is hunched forward and asleep. Every part of him is asleep, except for his mouth. He is muttering.

  ‘Don’t think… bowl. You don’t think… you bowl.’

  ‘Can you bowl the double bounce ball, Mr Gokul?’

  Mr Gokul is not fit to bowl anything. He keeps muttering. I shake my head at Ari. ‘If you believe this story, you’re a bigger fool than you look.’

  The hand that holds the glass looks positively deformed, as does its owner. His knuckles are twisted at improbable angles. He tries to convince us that Mathew took the field under various guises. Before lunch, he was the fast bowler, after lunch he bowled spin, in the last session he bowled medium pace. And while he did this, three Royal players rested in the closed confines of the dressing room.

  He tells us that in the first innings, Pradeep took 3 wickets. ‘2 as the pacey, 1 as the spinner.’ But he cannot claim all the credit.

  ‘The Royal fielding… sha! Like eleven Gus Logies, diving, throwing, catching,’ recalls Ari. ‘Plus the Thora batsmen played like mutts.’

  Trailing by 160, the Thomians turned on their grit and dug in. By the end of the second day they were 104–4 needing to bat an entire day.

  Mathew did not feature in that session.

  ‘The third day was pathetic,’ says Ari. ‘They bowled like emperors, those pacemen, that all-rounder, that left-arm spinner…’

  ‘Same person, same same,’ snorts Gokul. He is beginning to nod off again, though his mouth is still working. ‘All Pradeepan… That whole match I knew. Team arrive. Straight to dressing room. Straight to field. Straight to dressing room. For three days… And they win the game.’

  He tells us that when Sarinda Jurangpathy, the left-arm spinner, came on to bowl, he knew beyond doubt. The action was immaculate, but the bowler’s arms were four shades lighter than his face.

  ‘That’s why they never took off the blue and yellow caps. Bloody Royal cheaters,’ says Ari.

  By Gokul’s count, Pradeep finished the game with a match bag of 13 wickets, though credit was shared by the legitimate Royal bowlers.

  Ari is staring into space and for the first time in years, I’m smoking a cigarette outside of my writing table. Mr Gokulanath says he and all the Royal staff involved in cricket received a Rs 5,000 bonus for delivering the first Royal victory in sixteen years. He starts rocking forward with his eyes closed and mutters. ‘We did nothing… said nothing… and that is why… they pay us.’

  Then he leans over his chair, wiry limbs flailing, and vomits prawn curry and arrack into Manouri’s anthurium plant. Ari runs out swearing and returns with a garden hose and a schoolteacher expression.

  My bonus to Gokul is not as generous as Rs 5,000, but factoring in the free food and the bottle of Old, he hasn’t done too shabbily. Gokul hisses to Ari about contacting the Thomian Old Boys Association with this information. Ari hisses back.

  That weekend, after being sent by Sheila to buy new flowerpots for Manouri, I call every person connected to the 1983 Royal–Thomian I can find. Coaches, teachers, spectators, Royalists, Thomians.

  Administrators at Royal College inform me that Mr Satyakumar Gokulanath was dismissed after twenty-nine years of service for misconduct and disgraceful behaviour. Six hundred rupees and much coaxing later, I find the incident involved stolen money from the school sports coffers.

  My attempts at contacting Sir Nihal and the head coach are blocked when I foolishly mention that I want to interview them about the 1983 Big Match. I speak to old boys who played in that game, including the vice captain Sarinda Jurangpathy and first reserve Heshan Unamboowe. Both vehemently deny any conspiracy in the ’83 match, and then look at their wrists and excuse themselves a minute after the question is posed.

  The only people to verify that Royal used questionable methods are the Thomians I speak with. But none mention sunscreen or a bowler of a thousand actions. Seven claim food poisoning, nine claim ball tampering and four claim that the umpires were bribed with arrack and prostitutes.

  Iceberg

  Consider these stats:

  7 tests, 47 wickets

  27 one-dayers, 44 wickets

  Best test bowling, 10 for 51 (vs NZ, 1987)

  Best one-day bowling, 8 for 17 (1987 World Cup qualifier vs Bermuda)

  Bowling is all about how many wickets you take. Your strike rate is how many balls you need to get them. Your average is how many runs each cost. P.S. Mathew’s average was abysmal. He conceded many runs en route to his 91 international wickets.

  He once told Charith Silva, when they were sharing a room on tour, ‘An over is six bullets in a gun. I don’t mind firing some into the sky if one hits the target.’

  But when it came to the taking of wickets, he was unmatched. Let me illustrate by using one of Ariyaratne’s invented stats. Wickets per match. Number of wickets divided by number of matches. Not rocket science.

  My Jinadasa comes equipped with a darker setting. There is a reason that figure is in bold. Here are the greatest all-rounders of the 1980s. Perhaps even some of the greatest cricketers to walk the earth. Here are their wickets per match in tests:

  The greatest bowlers of yester-decade, no one within spitting distance of 6.71 wickets per match. This, you will find, is the tip of a chunk of ice at least twice as big as that which sank the Titanic.

  The Sister

  At first, she is suspicious. She walks around my room, glancing at my cricket books while tightly clutching her bag and umbrella.

  ‘Please take a seat, Mrs Sabi,’ says Ari, with a bow and a sweeping hand.

  ‘Who are y’all?’ she asks, not sitting down.

  ‘We are great admirers of your brother.’

  ‘Y’all are with that fellow Kuga?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Kuga. Are you with him?’

  ‘Who is Kuga?’

  Ari raises his eyebrows and I watch her watch us. She does so for some time.

  Sabeetha Amirthalingam nee Sivanathan looks very much a woman who wears the shalwar pants and controls the remote. She is plump, with gold rings on her painted toes. Her hair seems permanently wet, her wrists imprison bangles, and her square glasses hang like picture frames from her red pottu.

  She surveys my shelves, my Samyo radio and the stacks of newspaper clippings on my desk. She picks up my article titled ‘Pradeep Mathew. Unsung Hero’. The one with the grainy picture and the purple prose. She still doe
s not sit.

  ‘My brother passed away last year.’

  My heart sinks to my stomach and my stomach sinks to my bowels. I glance at Ari and catch Mrs Sabi glaring at me.

  ‘How did he…?’

  She stares at the picture. The one with the short-lived headband. ‘I hated this long hair. He nicely cut it once. Last time I saw him, he was bald.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Five years ago.’

  I try to pick the resemblance. Pradeep had a pinocchio nose; she has an eggplant honk. He had tiny squints; she has bulging eyes. He was skinny, dark; she is russet-coloured, chubby.

  ‘Are you sure your brother is dead?’

  She nods. Not without sadness. Then, finally, she sits. A few sips of Sheila’s ginger tea softens her leather handbag exterior. Her speech gathers speed. ‘Don’t know much about Pradeepan’s cricket. Tell you frankly, I didn’t have much contact with our family those days.’

  Mrs Sabi gives us the Wuthering Heights of it all. Aided by a loan from Sampath National Bank, the very firm that would later employ his son, Muhundan Sivanathan became part owner of Malinda Bakers in Moratuwa and was able to move the Sivanathan family from the Soysapura Flats to a respectable part of Angulana.

  ‘Appa said, “Hard work never killed anyone.” In the end it killed him. Pradeepan was a very quiet child, used to cry for the slightest thing.’

  Overbearing Sinhala mother and workaholic Tamil father raised two children who did not know what race they were. That was till 1983.

  ‘Our bus went past the flats. Fridges and TVs being thrown from the windows. Vehicles burning. Tamils being beaten on the street. We were terrified.’

  The men with clubs and knives stormed the bus and asked passengers to speak Sinhala, to say words that Tamils found tricky to pronounce, like baaldiya. Irangani and Sabi passed the test, an elderly gentleman in front did not. He was dragged out and set on fire.