By Revata S.Silva - The Island
Those who talk sensibly on Sanath Jayasuriya nowadays conveniently forget one thing. Any kind of sensibility and logic are irrelevant when the Jayasuriya phenomenon in international cricket is discerned. Jayasuriya’s career is all about strangeness; so his retirement is. It could be a bizarre feeling for anyone who writes about cricket to think that the fella will retire certainly for the last time this time; today in the Kennington Oval, London, after the first One-day International against England.
His previous retirement plans last year during the World Cup coincided with his entering into politics. So disappointingly the ‘Fonseka Vs Rajapaksa’ centred political rivalry, debate and bitter division in the local political milieu badly affected the opinion on the legendary cricketer. His immense popularity dwindled.
Jayasuriya, who will be 42 on June 30, will be the most unorthodox and revolutionary batsman to play international cricket at least for the last three decades (since the 1980s). Sachin Tendulkar could be the best of the lot but Jayasuriya was different. He was an epoch-making one. No other batsman quite single-handedly helped herald a new era of batsmanship like Sanath did in the mid 1990s. The sequence of events where Jayasuriya first becoming the most feared batsman in the world, by the late ‘90s, and then the sudden popularity of pinch-hitting, the arrival of Gilchrists, Rainas and Gayles, then the Twenty20s and the IPL, and all what we see today.... This Matara Mauler is a trend-setter if not THE main trend-setter of the bang-bang form of ultra modern cricket, the apple of the commercial world’s eye now.
moreHis influence on the game of cricket will continue to be felt and will be difficult to be ignored. One way, he could create acceptance to an extremely strange, unorthodox and radical approach to cricket batsmanship. That he was bestowed up on by the title of Wisden cricketer of the year along with Sachin in 1997 and later becoming Sri Lanka’s most successful Captain (according to the record at the time of his captaincy tenure) could well be regarded as, literally, an attack on the Bastille by the cricketing proletariat!
Those who pulverised Jayasuriya depending on ‘logical thinking,’ saying an old man making mockery of Sri Lankan cricket by trying to waste a young cricketer’s chance, tend to forget if there were any logic in the man. If so, he could never have stepped out to the very first delivery of an ODI aiming to whack a six over the fence. Again, only the ones who dare to (or mad enough) to defy logic can lead his side to win a Test, even after the opposition had made 445 runs in their 1st innings, by hammering 213 runs in just 278 balls (in the famous Oval Test in England).
The entire cricket world was stunned to see, we remember, how (and why) he hammered a century in just 48 balls in April 1996 against Pakistan in Singapore. Why he struck four successive sixes in an Aamir Sohail over from which he yielded a record 30 runs... There he scored his fifty in 32 balls and in his 65-ball 134 contained 11 sixes, another world record. There was no logic in such eccentric batting. It was that eccentric nature that created the mental background for next age of cricket that we; see today.
As it was said on many occasions, Jayasuriya’s was a fascinating roller-coaster life. He was ‘an ill-logic’ identical to himself. That bizarre nature thrilled us, helped cricket turn over a new leaf. When that strangeness was good for us, he was a hero-worshipped. Today, though, he will say adios for the last time. Those who love Sri Lanka cricket as well as those who are lost in the IPL frenzy nowadays, should say a big Thank You to Sanath, a strange hero of our times.
