Rangana Herath almost had his obituary in fine print. Back in 2013, when he was touring Australia, reports popped up that he had been killed in a car accident in Sydney. Herath was sleeping soundly in his hotel room when his phone began hissing incessantly. Finally, former teammate Dilhara Fernando’s buzz woke him up. The voice from the other end creaked: “Hey machan, are you alive?”
Rangana Herath almost had his obituary in fine print. Back in 2013, when he was touring Australia, reports popped up that he had been killed in a car accident in Sydney. Herath was sleeping soundly in his hotel room when his phone began hissing incessantly. Finally, former teammate Dilhara Fernando’s buzz woke him up. The voice from the other end creaked: “Hey machan, are you alive?”
Herath, spontaneously witty, replied: “Yeah, I’m Rangana’s ghost speaking. What’s up mate?” Fernando was as much shocked as relieved and after a moment’s shudder, realised it was a phoney social-media rumour. A merry chat later, Dilhara hung up. But Herath didn’t sleep that night. “Everybody who knew me, and some who didn’t, kept calling me,” he once recollected, typically laughing his gut out.
He, though, had read his cricketing obituary penned several times in print. After a terrible two-Test series against Bangladesh in 2008, Sri Lankan cricket had almost given up on him. His national contract was terminated and the selectors’ radar was flickering on a raft of mystery spinners such as Ajantha Mendis, Malinga Bandara and Suraj Randiv, who were fast-tracked to national consciousness, and among them Mendis was anointed the heir apparent of Muttiah Muralitharan.
The then 31-year-old Herath packed his bags to Staffordshire, where he would ply in the relative obscurity of North Staffs and South Cheshire Premier Division Cricket, bowling against doctors, carpenters and painters, besides former English Test batsman Kim Barnett.
It was not as much disappointment as a sense of adventure that prompted Herath’s unlikely destination. “At that time, I was not enjoying the game and so wanted a change to rediscover my passion,” he later recollected. It came at a price though, as he had to apply for loss-of pay leave from his employers Sampath Bank. “I thought it will be a nice vacation too, kind of English countryside and all. That should lift my spirits, I thought,” he explained. The winter was so harsh that he found bowling tough, even though the standard was much lower (in eight games, he picked 14 wickets).
Another phone call, another part of the world, was to change his life a year later. It wasn’t quite late in the night, and the tone at the other end was not alarming. Herath was just arranging his gym bag -he insists he’s a gym-hitter though the contours of his waistline would disagree – when his friend and then Sri Lanka skipper Kumar Sangakkara rang him. Sangakkara came straight to the point, “I want you in Galle.” Even before Herath could reply, Sangakkara abruptly cut the call.
Herath’s mind was in a whir. He was in Stoke-upon-Trent, which was 160 miles from London. Further 5,000-odd miles was Colombo, and from there Galle was another 100-mile drive. And the Test was just two days away. But Herath didn’t even think of not reaching Galle in time for the Test. It was probably his last shot at resurrecting a limp Test career. So 12 hours before the toss, he was at the scenic southern coast of Galle, asking Sangakkara, “How are you, machan?”
The rest, as the well-worn cliche goes, is history. He delivered one of his most famous second-innings orchestras in Galle. In an inspired spell that read 11.3-5-15-4, he stitched up a famous 50-run win, defending a paltry 168 against Pakistan, shutting the pens of his career-obituary churners once and for all.
Grand old man of Sri Lanka cricket
For the rest of his career, he was the grand old man of Sri Lankan cricket, of world cricket, a throwback, an anachronism, a Dinosaurian (as Sangakkara had once bracketed himself and Herath), call him what you will. There were other gentrified elderlies around, the Misbahs and Younis Khans, until a couple of years ago, but Herath was distinctly different. His body (not that he cared for it other than for some self-deprecatory banter) and soul belonged to an era ever distant, drifting somewhere between the chaotic freedom of the Beatles milieu and the gluttonous liberalism of the Packerian times.
To see him trudge to the crease — short pitter-patter steps, the most laid-back gather and release you’d see on a cricket ground and a narrow, almost apologetic pivot — was a sight as unique as that of his most vaunted, antithetical predecessor.
If Muttiah Muralitharan was all theatre, Herath was all quotidian. If Murali was all about eyes and furious wrist-whirls, Herath was all fingers and shoulder. He was a method actor to Murali’s radical libertarian. If Murali was a master of every trick in the spinner’s manual and much more, Herath skills hardly veered off text-bookish. Towards the latter stages of his career, he developed a carrom ball, which he sporadically used. But his trusted modes were time-tested ones, flight, dip, turn, and the killer arm-ball. Blend it with precision and discipline, and you had a potent combination. The only relief for batsmen would have been that they didn’t face both at their very best in tandem on a regular basis.
With Herath, it has never been about instant kill, but incremental sadism. Not before teasing and toying with his mind, more than the technique, would he nail the batsman. A batsman is doomed if his thinking is linear. Exiled Australia skipper Steve Smith would testify. In the 2016 tour to Sri Lanka, fearing his arm-ball, he devised an old-fashioned method to neuter Herath, which was to cut him off the stumps and dishevel his line.
So he was trying to play everything from inside the line of the ball. He kept bowling the orthodox away-goer and kept him waiting for the slider. Smith foresaw the slider, but he didn’t second-guess that Herath had already second-guessed him. Herath landed the ball a couple of inches shorter than he generally does. Smith plopped back for the back cut, but the ball withered in like a taunted snake after pitching and ratted the stumps. It was an under-cutter, delivered with a slightly roundish arm.
An embattled Smith summed up the soul of Herath’s craft: “He’s always at you. He changes his pace beautifully and bowls from different parts of the crease, changes his angles up. And on cracking-up subcontinental wickets, he’s unplayable.”
The latter aspect of his assessment portrays him as a subcontinental bully, which is also a statistical fact. Only 115 of his 430 wickets have come abroad, at an average of 38.57, almost 10 more than his numbers at home. But numbers, as numbers usually are, are myopic. His snapping, blister-cracked fingers spun Sri Lanka to their maiden victory in South Africa in Durban, where he took nine wickets for 128 runs, played his part in his country’s famous win at Leeds (2014), purchased another five-wicket haul in Hobart, and on numerous other instances, in the post Sangakkara-Jayawardene doomsday-impending days of Sri Lankan cricket, helped save their face.
For a while, it seemed the aged but ageless Herath would carry on for ages. He went on to pick 230 wickets after he turned 35. But beginning with India’s tour of Sri Lanka last year, signs of lurking dusk were visible. Creaking knees, stiff shoulders, fussy fingers were all conspiring against his will and wisdom — from January 2017, he has not played in a complete three-Test series. The fabled control weaned away, so did his temper. Herath was getting angrier and impatient, and it was more than perceptible that he couldn’t go on forever.
But this time, he decided to pen his own cricketing obituary. He has earned that right for himself. And in Galle — where he began his career and later resurrected it, where he’s just one shy of 100 wickets — against England he would feature one last time in Test-match whites. And with him goes out not only the last link with the last century but also a reassuring anachronism of the times. What postmodern-day cricket is, Herath was not.
Herath, spontaneously witty, replied: “Yeah, I’m Rangana’s ghost speaking. What’s up mate?” Fernando was as much shocked as relieved and after a moment’s shudder, realised it was a phoney social-media rumour. A merry chat later, Dilhara hung up. But Herath didn’t sleep that night. “Everybody who knew me, and some who didn’t, kept calling me,” he once recollected, typically laughing his gut out.
He, though, had read his cricketing obituary penned several times in print. After a terrible two-Test series against Bangladesh in 2008, Sri Lankan cricket had almost given up on him. His national contract was terminated and the selectors’ radar was flickering on a raft of mystery spinners such as Ajantha Mendis, Malinga Bandara and Suraj Randiv, who were fast-tracked to national consciousness, and among them Mendis was anointed the heir apparent of Muttiah Muralitharan.
The then 31-year-old Herath packed his bags to Staffordshire, where he would ply in the relative obscurity of North Staffs and South Cheshire Premier Division Cricket, bowling against doctors, carpenters and painters, besides former English Test batsman Kim Barnett.
It was not as much disappointment as a sense of adventure that prompted Herath’s unlikely destination. “At that time, I was not enjoying the game and so wanted a change to rediscover my passion,” he later recollected. It came at a price though, as he had to apply for loss-of pay leave from his employers Sampath Bank. “I thought it will be a nice vacation too, kind of English countryside and all. That should lift my spirits, I thought,” he explained. The winter was so harsh that he found bowling tough, even though the standard was much lower (in eight games, he picked 14 wickets).
Another phone call, another part of the world, was to change his life a year later. It wasn’t quite late in the night, and the tone at the other end was not alarming. Herath was just arranging his gym bag -he insists he’s a gym-hitter though the contours of his waistline would disagree – when his friend and then Sri Lanka skipper Kumar Sangakkara rang him. Sangakkara came straight to the point, “I want you in Galle.” Even before Herath could reply, Sangakkara abruptly cut the call.
Herath’s mind was in a whir. He was in Stoke-upon-Trent, which was 160 miles from London. Further 5,000-odd miles was Colombo, and from there Galle was another 100-mile drive. And the Test was just two days away. But Herath didn’t even think of not reaching Galle in time for the Test. It was probably his last shot at resurrecting a limp Test career. So 12 hours before the toss, he was at the scenic southern coast of Galle, asking Sangakkara, “How are you, machan?”
The rest, as the well-worn cliche goes, is history. He delivered one of his most famous second-innings orchestras in Galle. In an inspired spell that read 11.3-5-15-4, he stitched up a famous 50-run win, defending a paltry 168 against Pakistan, shutting the pens of his career-obituary churners once and for all.
Grand old man of Sri Lanka cricket
For the rest of his career, he was the grand old man of Sri Lankan cricket, of world cricket, a throwback, an anachronism, a Dinosaurian (as Sangakkara had once bracketed himself and Herath), call him what you will. There were other gentrified elderlies around, the Misbahs and Younis Khans, until a couple of years ago, but Herath was distinctly different. His body (not that he cared for it other than for some self-deprecatory banter) and soul belonged to an era ever distant, drifting somewhere between the chaotic freedom of the Beatles milieu and the gluttonous liberalism of the Packerian times.
To see him trudge to the crease — short pitter-patter steps, the most laid-back gather and release you’d see on a cricket ground and a narrow, almost apologetic pivot — was a sight as unique as that of his most vaunted, antithetical predecessor.
If Muttiah Muralitharan was all theatre, Herath was all quotidian. If Murali was all about eyes and furious wrist-whirls, Herath was all fingers and shoulder. He was a method actor to Murali’s radical libertarian. If Murali was a master of every trick in the spinner’s manual and much more, Herath skills hardly veered off text-bookish. Towards the latter stages of his career, he developed a carrom ball, which he sporadically used. But his trusted modes were time-tested ones, flight, dip, turn, and the killer arm-ball. Blend it with precision and discipline, and you had a potent combination. The only relief for batsmen would have been that they didn’t face both at their very best in tandem on a regular basis.
With Herath, it has never been about instant kill, but incremental sadism. Not before teasing and toying with his mind, more than the technique, would he nail the batsman. A batsman is doomed if his thinking is linear. Exiled Australia skipper Steve Smith would testify. In the 2016 tour to Sri Lanka, fearing his arm-ball, he devised an old-fashioned method to neuter Herath, which was to cut him off the stumps and dishevel his line.
So he was trying to play everything from inside the line of the ball. He kept bowling the orthodox away-goer and kept him waiting for the slider. Smith foresaw the slider, but he didn’t second-guess that Herath had already second-guessed him. Herath landed the ball a couple of inches shorter than he generally does. Smith plopped back for the back cut, but the ball withered in like a taunted snake after pitching and ratted the stumps. It was an under-cutter, delivered with a slightly roundish arm.
An embattled Smith summed up the soul of Herath’s craft: “He’s always at you. He changes his pace beautifully and bowls from different parts of the crease, changes his angles up. And on cracking-up subcontinental wickets, he’s unplayable.”
The latter aspect of his assessment portrays him as a subcontinental bully, which is also a statistical fact. Only 115 of his 430 wickets have come abroad, at an average of 38.57, almost 10 more than his numbers at home. But numbers, as numbers usually are, are myopic. His snapping, blister-cracked fingers spun Sri Lanka to their maiden victory in South Africa in Durban, where he took nine wickets for 128 runs, played his part in his country’s famous win at Leeds (2014), purchased another five-wicket haul in Hobart, and on numerous other instances, in the post Sangakkara-Jayawardene doomsday-impending days of Sri Lankan cricket, helped save their face.
For a while, it seemed the aged but ageless Herath would carry on for ages. He went on to pick 230 wickets after he turned 35. But beginning with India’s tour of Sri Lanka last year, signs of lurking dusk were visible. Creaking knees, stiff shoulders, fussy fingers were all conspiring against his will and wisdom — from January 2017, he has not played in a complete three-Test series. The fabled control weaned away, so did his temper. Herath was getting angrier and impatient, and it was more than perceptible that he couldn’t go on forever.
But this time, he decided to pen his own cricketing obituary. He has earned that right for himself. And in Galle — where he began his career and later resurrected it, where he’s just one shy of 100 wickets — against England he would feature one last time in Test-match whites. And with him goes out not only the last link with the last century but also a reassuring anachronism of the times. What postmodern-day cricket is, Herath was not.