DON’T TAUNT MURALI

Sweet success

By Desmond Samith

Accidents, fate and ‘ifs and buts’ do not seem to be in Muttiah Muralitharan’s book. He is known to be a cricketer with a strong will. He flew back to Sri Lanka taking a short break from his county cricket, for the Bangladesh Test series. He just wanted 26 wickets to reach the 700 mark. Twenty six wickets in three matches should have been a tall order for any other bowler but not for Murali. He’s back on county duty after snaring his 700th Test victim.
Fortunately for Sri Lanka fans Murali saga will not end soon. He is set to overtake Shane Warne’s world record of 708 wickets. The mercurial spinner has already set his eyes on 1000 wickets. “I think I can achieve a little bit more than the world record.
I hope to play until the next World Cup in 2011 and the challenge is, before I retire I am thinking of taking 1000 Test wickets,” he told the reporters. It’s a long way to go and Murali has immediate goals as well. “I want to go to Australia (in November) and try and win the series because we have never won one there.
Also, I have not taken five wickets in an innings in Australia. They are the No. 1 team in the world but we can also be better than them if we play to our strengths,” he further said.
Those words epitomise his large heart for the country. Personal milestones and records are there but the country’s name and glory are what should come before everything. That’s why he’s ‘our Murali.’ The champion of the majority Sinhalese, minority Tamils, Muslims, Burghers or whoever.
Muralitharan, who began his cricket career as a medium paceman and later tried his hand at off spin on the instructions of his school coach Sunil Fernando, is on the verge of becoming Test cricket’s most successful bowler. Records are there to be broken. Why not? Murali is also slowly approaching Wasim Akram’s ODI wicket record of 502. He has now 432.
Australia has always been a challenge for the champion spinner. His first Test was against them in 1993. His first scalp was their lower order bat Greg McDermott. In the second essay of that Test played at R. Premadasa Stadium he accounted for their opener Tom Moody.

Doubts

Murali’s action has always been a puzzle for all comers. Once the Australian captain Allan Border thought he was a leg spinner. Former Test cricketers Bishen Singh Bedi (India), Michael Holding (West Indies) and Dean Jones (Australia) have time and again criticised his bowling action. And it was in Australia that the worst thing happened. He was called for throwing in Australia in 1995-96, first in the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne by Darrel Hair and later in the one-day series that followed. He was cleared by the ICC after biomechanical analysis at the University of Western Australia and at the University of Hong Kong in 1996. They concluded that his action created the ‘optical illusion of throwing’.
Murali never stopped learning. He added a fast top-spinner to his armoury and later developed a deadly doosra, off-spinner’s version of googly. That instantly attracted criticism. When he used his latest weapon against the Aussies in a home Test with good results it was too much for the English match referee Chris Broad. Fresh doubts rose over his bowling action. Murali underwent a number of medical tests in Australia, England and Hong Kong to ‘prove his innocence.’ He once boycotted a series in Australia as he had been subjected to verbal abuse there in a previous series. No bowler in Test history has been subjected to such physical and mental agonies because of his bowling action. Murali’s doosra divided the cricket world. Following tests on bowlers’ flexion levels it was revealed that almost all present and past cricketers operated above the allowed limit.
Murali has had his fair share of accolades as well. He was once declared Wisden’s best player and former Australian captain Steve Waugh said he was the ‘Don Bradman of bowling.’
Murali’s humanitarian efforts for the UN and in the wake of the tsunami, along with Warne, brought him closer to the hearts of millions of fans. North Indian Madhimalar came into Murali’s life and so did a son later.
With all the accolades, successes, records and many more, Murali still remains a down to earth cricketer. He is still the son of that Kandy confectioner. He may have inherited that sweet smile from his family who make sweets for their living. Come November, the ‘smiling assassin’ Murali will bring tears of joy to many more local fans.


DON’T TAUNT MURALI
- Symonds

SYDNEY, (AFP) Andrew Symonds on Saturday urged Australian cricket fans not to taunt Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah Muralitharan if he passes Shane Warne’s Test wicket world record while touring Down Under this year.
Australian crowds have regularly abused “Murali” since he was twice called for throwing, with even Prime Minister John Howard labelling him a chucker.

There are fears the harrassment, which led to the spinner boycotting a tour Down Under in 2004, will intensify if he eclipses Shane Warne’s 708 Test wicket haul on Australian soil later this year.
Australian all-rounder Symonds, Muralitharan’s former teammate at English county side Lancashire, said he would be embarassed if the Australian crowds failed to acknowledge his achievement.
“I just hope the beer drinkers in the sun don’t give him a hard time and late one afternoon if he breaks the record they start on him,” Symonds told Australian Associated Press.

“I hope that doesn’t happen, I hope people can stand up and actually applaud him for what he is -- a legend.”
Muralitharan has 700 Test wickets and is likely to overtake Warne’s 708 in one of the two Tests between Sri Lanka and home side Australia in November.

Symonds said if Murali snared the record, he did not want the Australian crowd to sour the moment.
“Definitely it would be embarrassing for us as a team if they didn’t (applaud him),” Symonds told AAP.
“We respect him for his skills and for what he has done and I think it would be rude, straight out rude, if they didn’t sort of respect him and give him the pat on the back he deserves.”
Controversy over the bowler’s action exploded publicly on Boxing Day 1995 when Australian umpire Darrell Hair called Murali seven times for throwing, creating a furore.

He was subsequently called during a one-day series in Australia, which almost prompted Sri Lanka to walk off midway through a one-day match in Adelaide four years later.
Murali refused to tour Australia in 2004 because of his treatment by Australians, including Prime Minister and cricket fan John Howard.

Largely on the back of controversy surrounding Murali, the International Cricket Council set up a detailed study of bowling actions with the latest scientific equipment, and found that just about every bowler threw the ball to some extent.
It was only when a bowler’s arm flexed to 15 degrees that it became detectable to the naked eye so the ICC set 15 degrees as the limit for a bowler’s elbow movement.

Any bowler now reported by umpires for having a suspect action must be scientifically tested. If found to be outside the 15-degree parameter the bowler is banned and must have remedial work with experts before being allowed to play again.

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Davis Cup tennis

Sri Lanka in ‘must win’ situation

By Sammidha Kalmith Rathnayake
Sri Lanka are in a ‘must win’ situation in their final first round match against Lebanon if they are to proceed to the next round of the Davis Cup Asia/Oceania Zone III tennis tournament continued at the SLTA courts yesterday.
At the same time Sri Lanka must also hope that UAE beats Oman in their match also scheduled for today.
If Lebanon goes on to win the match, ‘B’ group will have a three-way contest which will be decided on their previous meetings in the tournament.
Yesterday morning Sri Lanka managed to beat UAE by 2/1 and one can say that they are gradually coming out of the bad patch which saw them lose to Oman in their opening game.
Renouk Wijemanne again failed to make an impression as he went down to Hamed Abbas Al Janahi by 6/2, 6/1 in the first singles. The match between Omar Bahrouzyan and star player Harshana Godamanna was a peice of cake for the locals as he recorded a convincing 6/2, 6/0 win. In the doubles Godamanna partnered by Rajeev Rajapakse made short work of Mahmoud-Nader Al Baloushi and Omar Bahrouzyan to win 6/3, 6/1.
The other matches of the day saw Lebanon beat Oman 2-1 and Singapore beat Vietnam by the same margin. Saudi Arabia and Malaysia were tied at 1/1 with the doubles to decide the tie. Today will be the final day of the tournament.

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