The Legend of Pradeep Mathew

by Shehan Karunatilaka

  ‘My, you should see the talent those days. There was Val Adi Sarath from Maradana. Faster than even Ravi de Mel. Got sponsored to play for Chilaw Marians.’

  Newton, Lankadeepa stalwart since the late 1960s, was not a sportswriter who thought he could coach. He was a much rarer creature. A cricket coach who thought he could write.

  On the advice of Aussie cricket consultant Pat Philpott, the Sports Ministry halted the funding of Colombo softball tournaments, seeing it as a breeding ground for unorthodox bowling actions and bad batting technique.

  ‘What rot! Even Paulpillai, the most technically perfect schoolboy batsman since Satha, played softball. He scored seventeen 5-over 50s. Later got into NCC side.’

  Newton was a political sportswriter. He took payment to write propaganda. He proudly claims to have helped get rid of two Sri Lankan cricket captains and four selectors with his poison pen.

  ‘When I curse someone, they stay cursed.’

  He also claims credit for helping reinstate the Captain in 1993 after he was dropped for failing a fitness test.

  Having spent years writing dense, unreadable articles about the oldboy network quashing cricket at grassroots, Newton decided to join those he couldn’t beat. He began scouting for talent and charging clubs sizeable finder’s fees.

  ‘People say all my players could never last more than a season. But what about Galappatti, Villavarayan, Waragoda? All played club for over ten years.’

  ‘Didn’t one of your cricketers get to play for Sri Lanka?’

  ‘Why not? Granville. Karnain. Von Hagt.’

  I note that none of these players lasted over a season, but I keep schtum.

  ‘Not Mathew?’

  Finally Newton looks me in the face. ‘Pradeepan, I met at Soysapura. But I never promoted him.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘I taught him everything he knew.’

  ‘When he played softball?’

  ‘No. When he played for Thurstan.’

  The Ratio

  My sister brings food and gossip. Loku’s youngest daughter has an Australian boyfriend. Bala has been planting teak trees on Maddhu’s land. Her son is joining IBM in Chicago.

  I ask for pastries, but I am allowed only fruit and crackers. After an appetite-less life, I crave food now that I am denied it. I yearn for a karola badun floating in crisp onion, a roast leg of lamb wrapped in crunchy crackling, or a burgundy katta sambal on kiribath mixed with umbalakada.

  But none as much as I crave a shot.

  I let my sister say a prayer over me. It is so lengthy that I doze off, waking to her kissing my forehead and stroking my head. ‘God bless you, Sudu.’

  Brian and Renga drop in that same day. They inform me that the SwarnaVision lawsuit over the documentary that no one saw is finally over. ITL, which had been closed due to bankruptcy, won unprecedented damages and soon returned to air.

  ‘That Rakwana is countersuing. The dumb buffalo,’ says Brian with relish.

  They bring good news. Mr Sulaiman from ITL agreed to pay my script fees when he heard of my health problems. It is a blessing. The saline does not pay for itself.

  ‘You saw Ranatunga’s innings vs Zimbabwe?’ booms Renga, swaying on his chair. ‘Best innings by a Sri Lankan in Africa.’

  Brian complains about the TIC and FLC, who appear to be monopolising the cricket commentary scene. ‘Bunch of clowns. They throw parties for all the Chappells and the Bothams and the Greigs and get the job.’

  I thank Brian for the ITL money with the lie that he is a better commentator than both of them and he will one day make the cut.

  The doctor says I should be able to go home by the end of the week.

  I ask him about the mathematics of my last days. He gives them to me straight.

  1 sip = Death.

  History

  ‘I thought Lucky Nanayakkara was the Thurstan coach.’

  ‘Ah. You met that fool,’ says Newton, scratching his moustache. ‘Fellow was only master-in-charge. Didn’t know balls about coaching. All he does is smoke his pipe. I only coached U-15 from ’76 onwards.’

  ‘How did you get a school coaching job without any experience?’

  ‘How did you get Ceylon Sportswriter of the Year without any talent?’

  ‘Twice, remember? Imagine the talent that takes.’

  Newton smiles. It was his inability to rile me that always riled him. ‘I was an old boy of Thurstan. I had a knack for coaching. And a knack for finding talent.’

  He claims to have coached Mathew from the time he was eleven. Even then the boy would squander his abilities.

  ‘First few matches fellow would bowl his heart out. By the end of season he would be in the reserves. Hardly came for practice.’

  ‘When did he become a left-arm spinner?’

  ‘I only advised him. After the Royal–Thomian match.’

  ‘I heard some things about that match.’

  ‘Do not ask me, because I will not tell you.’

  When I tell him I have spoken to Gokulanath and Sir Nihal Pieris, he is taken aback. I ask him if he knows anything about the former’s death.

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘He coached at Soysapura as well.’

  ‘That was that fielding coach, no? I heard he got sacked for stealing from the Royal Sports Fund. Must have drunk himself to death.’

  I tell him he was stabbed.

  ‘That area is full of thugs. He must’ve owed money. Typical Jaffna crook. Too many pretend coaches in this country.’

  Newton tells me that he advised Pradeep not to play the Royal–Thomian and that it was not the first or last time Mathew refused to heed his advice.

  ‘He could copy every action reasonably well. But when he mimicked Malik Malalasekera, the left-arm spinner, there was magic.’

  Newton did not encounter Mathew till two years later, at the Soysapura Softball Tournament. When Newton asked him to bowl for the Cooray Park 6-a-side, the gangly, shaggy-haired youngster not only asked ‘Fast or spin?’, but also ‘Left or right?’

  ‘The fellow dropped out of university in the UK to try out for the Sri Lanka team. Must’ve been around ’84. I told him he was a fool and advised him to bowl left-arm chinaman.’

  Newton also organised that Mathew board with a family in Dehiwela when the Sivanathan family fights reached unbearability. And asked him to cut his hair and stop slouching.

  ‘What a bowler he was. Bowled out Val Adi Sarath. Dismissed Paulpillai. Had both Japamany twins stumped. Cooray Park won the tournament.’

  Newton then introduced the boy to the Bloomfield Cricket Club. And in 1985, the bowler formerly known as Sivanathan was taken to Australia for the World Series and then selected to play the first test vs India at the SSC.

  The rest, as they say, is history. Or should have been.

  Purple Green

  On my fifth day in Nawasiri, Garfield calls. He tells me he does not want to fight. That he and his wife are settling in Zurich. That he has regular work with a band called Purple Green. ‘Is it green or is it purple?’

  ‘Both. Kind of.’

  ‘Why are you speaking in that accent, men?’

  ‘I have to learn German to apply for citizenship.’

  First Japanese. Now German. Is he training to be a World War II spy?

  This is what I think. What I say is, ‘How is your wife?’

  ‘Adriana is good. You’d like her. Big football fan. How are you,

  Thaathi?’

  ‘Have to give up booze. Otherwise, fine.’

  ‘I’ll try and come there for Sinhala New Year.’

  Since when did Garfield Karunasena care about Sinhala New Year, I think. As if your Swiss German wife will eat kavum and ride onchilla, I think.

  What I say is, ‘OK. Take care.’

  Sheila is very proud of me.

  Cricket Uncles

  Who sends a driver with a cellulite phone to visit a sick man? An idiot cricketer who has just got rich on tea and margarin
e commercials, that’s who. The man is dressed in ministerly white and hands me the phone, as if it were a message from God. It is a much sleeker model than Ari’s brick. The man on the other end is pretending to pant.

  ‘Hello, Uncle. Sorry … have training, otherwise I would’ve come.’

  ‘No problem, Charith. Thanks for calling.’

  ‘Uncle is OK?’

  ‘Liver problems, but if I stop …’

  ‘Super. Super. When will Uncle be back at home?’

  ‘Tomorrow …’

  ‘Superb. I will call. I have a small job.’

  I wince, but say nothing. I know what the job will be. That morning’s Daily News had the squad for the 1998 tour to South Africa. Charith wasn’t on it. He would need a PR article saying how fit and talented he was. There was a time I would have whored myself for this kind of project.

  Like when I wrote a scathing piece for a government rag about the ‘cricket uncles’ who exploit the outstation pool of cricketing talent and hold clubs and the Cricket Board to ransom. I was called by the Sports Ministry and told what to write and they paid me. But that is not why Newton Rodrigo did not talk to me for fifteen years.

  The Apple

  ‘What happened to you, Wije?’

  Newton is getting ready to leave.

  ‘I’m sorry I wrote that piece about “cricket uncles”. I needed the money. And you had …’

  His head falls back, his nose elevates a fraction. ‘Forget it. Look at you. Ceylon Sportswriter of the Year turned Cricket Board stooge. You had the talent, not me. What happened?’

  He asks these unanswerables while stroking the keys of his Benz.

  ‘Some of us don’t judge our lives by the money we can steal.’

  ‘For your information, I never took money from Mathew.’

  At that moment Ari walks in with his camera. Newton rises in disgust.

  After a few minutes of name-calling I manage to calm proceedings. My gaze falls on a red apple my sister brought. The type that Eve ate, the type that killed Snow White, the type that I cannot stomach. I recognise the huge scar on Newton’s left hand. The one Ari had spotted at Bloomfield. It does not look like he got it from the mat slides in Sathutu Uyana.

  ‘I don’t remember you having six fingers.’

  ‘That’s because you were drunk all the time. And I used to hide it. I was embarrassed.’

  ‘But he doesn’t have six fingers,’ says Ari.

  ‘I got it removed when I could afford to,’ says Newton, looking at me. ‘It only helped me when I coached left-arm spinners. And I stopped doing that years ago.’

  I pick up the apple. ‘Show us.’ I extend my hand awkwardly, like a granny using a remote control.

  Ari gazes with contempt at the scar between thumb and index finger.

  Newton scowls. ‘What?’

  ‘Show us.’

  ‘But I don’t have the finger any more.’

  ‘Why don’t you use both your hands?’

  ‘How?’

  I place my right index in the webbing between my left hand index and thumb.

  ‘Mine wasn’t that long,’ smirks Newton. ‘More like this.’

  Newton inserts his pinkie on the webbing at a strange angle. He cradles the apple on it and rolls it around his four free fingers, his gaze shifting from Ari to me.

  ‘Something like this.’

  And then, with a rosy red apple and two cupped hands, he shows us in minute detail every ball he claims to have helped invent from 1985 to 1994.

  Sri Lankan English

  Jabir is my sixth visitor. He brings nothing but his cheerful self and that is more than enough. I could have done without the gaudy green shirt, though.

  He swoons over the batting of new boy Jayawardena vs Zimbabwe and says we have a good chance of keeping the World Cup if we win in South Africa. Ari and I hold our comments.

  He tells us again that we should talk to Uncle Neiris at the SSC.

  ‘I am the fixing his wiring. I know the electrical.’

  This time Ari cannot be restrained.

  ‘I am the person fixing his wiring. I am an electrician. That dwarf is mad. I told you before.’

  ‘Don’t correct Jabir’s English. And he’s a midget, not a dwarf.’

  ‘If Jabir is going to speak English, he should speak properly.’

  ‘I understood what he said. That was proper Sri Lankan English.’

  ‘There is no such thing as Sri Lankan English. Even if there was, it wouldn’t be proper.’

  Jabir keeps smiling, but reverts to Sinhala.

  ‘He has recordings of old matches. I have to rewire the full scoreboard. At least come and look.’

  Ari says he is too busy. I say nothing, knowing that lying plugged into a drip-feed gives me more than enough excuses.

  None of My Business

  ‘You know Sobers had a sixth finger on both hands that were removed at birth?’

  Newton rests the apple on his extra finger and lets the ball roll across his palm, each finger traversing its seam, blessing it with variation.

  ‘Pradeepan had strong fingers. He could rotate his wrist to almost 360 degrees and deliver the ball with any of his fingers.’

  The last finger to touch the ball determined the nature of the spin. The index and middle fingers made it a chinaman, the ring a top-spinner and the pinky, a googly. It was all in the fingertips.

  In the 1986 Pakistan home series, the SLBCC had given players and umpires the directive that rules were to be bent. Against Newton’s advice, Mathew refused to obey and subsequently lost his place.

  Mathew spent the next few seasons honing his craft and made his mark for Bloomfield, with the help of his old Thurstan coach who he visited on occasion. Newton lays claim to the undercutter, my favourite Mathew delivery.

  ‘That was my idea, a back-spinner that stays low,’ says Newton, twirling the ball with both hands, mimicking the digit he lost. They fell out again for two years, just after the 1987 Asgiriya Test.

  ‘Why did you have it removed?’

  ‘I hated it all through my childhood.’ As Newton raises his hand to display his scar, his gold watch slips under his sleeve. He pulls it out and tightens it back to visibility.

  I ask Newton why they fell out and Newton asks if Ari knows why he and I did not speak for fifteen years. I shake my head. ‘Because it’s none of his business,’ he says. ‘And this is none of yours.’

  I ask him if he thinks Mathew might be dead. He tells me it is possible. ‘He moved with some shady characters. Didn’t help his career.’

  I tell him about Sabi Amirthalingam and the death notice. He tells me never to believe anything the Sivanathan family says. I ask him why; he tells me it is none of my business.

  Discharge

  On my final day, just before Newton’s arrival, I get a call from Graham Snow.

  ‘How are you, WeeJay? Heard you were feeling poorly.’

  He apologises for being a stranger and I accept.

  ‘Those documentaries turned out good. Who the hell is Rakwana …’

  ‘Long story. Do you want to speak to Ari?’

  ‘I will not speak to that time-serving crybaby,’ yells Ari. It is loud enough for the next two rooms and for Graham Snow, half a world away. Ari exits the room, while Sheila packs up my things.

  ‘Could you give me Ari’s address, WeeJay?’

  ‘You already have it.’

  ‘Oh. That’s right. Give it to me again.’

  ‘Forgive him, Graham, he’s a bit upset …’

  ‘I know. It’s my fault. What’s the address?’

  ‘17/5 de Saram …’

  Newton does not approve of the unorthodox deliveries. ‘That is our people’s whole problem. Try to do everything. He might as well have bowled right-hand also.’

  My suitcase is packed, my bladder is empty, my hair is combed, my liver is clean.

  ‘When did you last see Mathew?’ I ask.

  ‘I met him with that Aussie girl
of his.’

  ‘Shirali Fernando?’

  ‘No idea. That’s when he gave me the thank-you card. Fellow was different. Short haircut. No longer slouching.’ ‘So you never saw him in the 1990s?’

  ‘Oh yes. I took up coaching indoor cricket. He came to ask my advice.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On how to bowl the double bounce ball.’ Ari laughs like a jackal.

  ‘Was that before or after you discovered the wheel?’

  Mathew came to Newton in 1991, uncertain and jabbering. His girlfriend is described by Newton as ‘tubby’ and ‘speaking with a hena accent’. Mathew had just returned to the side after being away for three years due to injury.

  ‘Fellow, I think, had been drinking. Called me out of the blue and wanted to chat.’

  They met at Newton’s house and Mathew asked strange questions. Whether it was immoral to throw a game. Or to play with South Africa. Whether his carrom flick and his leaper were damaging his fingers.

  ‘I told him he had too many variations. That throwing a game was a sin. I also told him not to take money from apartheid South Africa, unless there was a lot of it.’

  We pile into Ari’s Capri as Newton walks towards his Benz. I am convinced that there is a large chunk of something that he is keeping from us, something his pride will not allow.

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘At that wedding of the great Sri Lankan opening batsman, Mr S …’

  Ari puts his hand over his mouth and laughter fills his eyes. Sheila brings the last of my bags. Newton walks away. ‘See you, Wije. Goodbye, Sheila.’

  So that is why Mathew was staring at us at the wedding of the GLOB. We were stuffing buriyani down his old coach.

  Newton rides off in his Benz and does not wave. Ari and Sheila help me into the Ford Capri.

  ‘If you believe that liar, you’re mad,’ says Ari. ‘Wish I had some roast chicken.’ We burst into laughter and my stomach starts to hurt. Sheila does not smile.