Radically different

16-Dec-2008It 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)