FlashBack 1997 | Sanath Jayasuriya honoured by `Wisden' and Indian Cricket (15 May 1997)

No cricketer in recent times has revolutionised batting in the abbreviated form of the game more than Sanath Jayasuriya, the left-handed opener of World Cup champions Sri Lanka.

Jayasuriya with his lesser known partner Romesh Kaluwitharana are recognised as the trendsetters for getting the maximum runs in the first 15 overs.

Jayasuriya's exploits during the 1996 Wills World Cup, which played a major part in his country emerging champions have not gone unrecognised.

DOUBLE RECOGNITION

In fact it has earned him double recognition as one of the `Five Cricketers of the Year' in both the "Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1997'', widely recognised as the cricketer's `Bible' and, "Indian Cricket 1996'', considered the `Wisden of the East'.

No Sri Lankan has had the honour of being picked for such honours by two prestigious publications in one single year - 1996.

It was the year when Jayasuriya with his blazing approach made a mockery of the first 15 overs of a limited overs game that an exasperated England captain Michael Atherton made the comment that the authorities should seriously consider reframing the rules.

SUBMISSION

Atherton's comments were made shortly after Jayasuriya had blasted his men into submission and out of the World Cup with a marvellous knock of 82 off 44 balls.

`Wisden' commented: "Jayasuriya's assault on England's bowling in the quarter-final at Faisalabad was authentic, aggressive batting without insult to the coaching manual''.

In picking Jayasuriya as one of its five cricketers, `Wisden' comments: "Sanath Jayasuriya cannot yet be classified as a great player which makes his influence in 1996 all the more remarkable. His World Cup exploits in an unexpected Sri Lankan triumph did not just assure him of a lasting place in the game's history, but promised - indeed, for a few heady weeks, insisted - that the course of the game would change forever. None of The Greats have ever achieved that''.

PINCH_HITTER

`Wisden' also notes that it was Jayasuriya's combustible stroke-play that saw the term `pinch-hitter' being stolen from baseball to define an opening batsman specifically given the licence to adopt a high-risk approach in the opening overs.

Jayasuriya is in the exalted company of Pakistanis Saeed Anwar and Mushtaq Ahmed, Indian Sachin Tendulkar and West Indian Phil Simmons, who are the other cricketers of the year.

By picking Jayasuriya, the time-honoured publication stepped away from century old tradition to include a cricketer in its Hall of Fame who has not played a season of cricket in England.

"Jayasuriya's performances in the World Cup reverberated everywhere and earned him the right to be in our Hall of Fame'' wrote `Wisden' editor Matthew Engel.

THIRD

Jayasuriya is only the third Sri Lankan to be honoured by this world acclaimed almanack which is in its 134th year of publication. The others were Sidath Wettimuny (1985) and Aravinda de Silva (1996).

`Indian Cricket' described Jayasuriya's batting as "a curious mix of science, magic and madness, based on quickness of hand and eye, and a willingness to do what is pretty dangerous - and dirty - work''.

That Jayasuriya won the `Most Valuable Player' award was due to a handful of runs and wickets that were worth their weight in the World Cup for sheer timing.

"It is timing which is the very essence of one-day cricket - coming good on the day, at the hour, in the mere minutes which decides which way a match is going to swing. The award had an altogether different ring to it and required different credentials. For the world champions, Jayasuriya was the magic trump who turned up everytime the Lankans sought something inspirational'' said the annual.

SEVENTH

Jayasuriya is the seventh Sri Lankan to be honoured by `Indian Cricket' which is in its 50th year of publication.

Aravinda de Silva (1990), Ravi Ratnayeke (1987), Duleep Mendis (1983), Somachandra de Silva and David Heyn (both 1976), and Stanley Jayasinghe (1965) are those who have figured in the roll of honour previously.

FlashBack Wills World Cup 1996 | The success story of Sanath Jayasuriya

10 April 1996
From bits `n pieces cricketer to Master Blaster

One of the greatest success stories in Sri Lanka`s cricket history is the stellar role played by that stockily built left-handed all-rounder from Matara, SANATH JAYASURIYA, in winning the Wills World Cup for his country.

From total obscurity to world fame is the rags to riches story of this vastly talented cricketer.

When Jayasuriya entered the Wills World Cup, he was just another ordinary member of the Sri Lankan team. His name could hardly match up to such mega stars like Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Mark Waugh, Shane Waugh and the likes.

When the tournament unfolded and the matches started to take shape, there gradually emerged a new start on the horizon, but still he did not individually make a big impact because he was not scoring hundreds like the Mark Waughs and the Tendulkars. But what had everyone talking was the swiftness with which he was gathering his runs.

The manner in which Jayasuriya began smashing the bowlers to all parts of the field especially in the first 15 overs, brought about a new dimension to batting in one-day cricket.

When his little partner Romesh Kaluwitharana also started hitting the middle, pinch-hitting was its awesome best. The two carried the scoring rate to such dizzy heights that none of the other 11 teams in the competition could match. They could only watch in awe how these two wielders of the willow accumulated runs with such rapidity.

Although Kaluwitharana could not stay long to play a big innings like his partner, two of his partnerships with Jayasuriya put the contest beyond the opposition`s sights within the first seven overs.

Who could forget the opening stand of 53 in five overs against India at the Kotla grounds in Delhi or the 83 off 40 balls against Kenya in Kandy.

Jayasuriya raised batting standards in limited overs competitions to new heights with his phenomenal stroke play. His pugna- cious hitting in the first 15 overs gave the opposing captain many nightmares, especially as the fielding side was allowed only two fielders outside the 30-yard circle.

Jayasuriya exploited the one-day rule so much that an exasperated England captain Michael Atherton said after the blitzkrieg in Faisalabad, that the one-day rules should be reviewed and changes made, if necessary.

Atherton`s beleaguered Englishmen were smashed for 82 runs off 44 balls in the quarter-finals and the forlorn England captain went to the extent of admitting that Sri Lanka used their first 15 overs as their last.

The manner in which Jayasuriya was collecting his runs, batting records in one-day competitions were in danger of being sur- passed. It was only a matter of time before they were replaced by Jayasuriya`s name in the record books.

He was within hailing distance of the fastest one-day hundred against England when he just threw it away. But less than a month later Jaysuriya did get the record when he hit a spectacular 134 off 64 balls against Pakistan in the Singer Cup one-day triangu- lar in Singapore on Monday. He completed his century off just 48 balls and whilst reaching that milestone, he also achieved two other records for the most number of sixes - 11 and, for the most number of runs in one over - 29.

When Jaysuriya was adjudged the `Most Valuable Player` in the Wills World Cup, the purists may have vetoed the choice. His two breathtaking knocks against India (79 off 76 balls) and Eng- land (82 off 44 balls) by themselves could not have made him win the award. But the wicket of Tendulkar and two more victims (Manjrekar and Jadeja) with his left-arm spin and the two catches he took to compensate for his failure with the bat at Eden Gar- dens made certain that there was really no contest for the Audi car.

In terms of runs scored, Jayasuriya`s 212 may have sounded a lit- tle weak. But considering he scored those in 161 balls and that his runs had such a dramatic effect on the opposition so as to put the fright in them, he was in a league of his own.

Mark Waugh (472 runs) and Tendulkar (458) with all those runs in the preliminary league stage still failed to make the same impact that Jayasuriya made to win the award.

"He has batted well, fielded brilliantly, and when given the ball, has come up with crucial wickets. What else can I ask of a player?`` quipped Sri Lanka captain Arjuna Ranatunga when Jayasuriya won the award.

"He has been our consistent player and I am happy one of our boys got the award, he deserves it. We knew that both he and Aravinda were in contention along with Tendulkar and Mark Waugh. It`s a great achievement by Sanath,`` said Ranatunga, who could consider himself fortunate to have a utility player in the mould of Jayasuriya in his team.

The World Cup since its inception in 1975 have seen some spectac- ular batting from left-handers like Clive Lloyd, Alvin Kalli- charan and to a lesser extent New Zealand`s Mark Greatbatch in 1992. The World Cups have been generally dominated by right-hand batsmen and right-arm bowlers. Jayasuriya is the fourth left- hander to play a vital role in his side`s success.

He may not be a patch of Lloyd and Kallicharan`s batsmanship. They did not fling the bat in a predetermined manner. More impor- tantly, Lloyd packed his strokes with power and Kallicharan caressed the ball. Jayasuriya is a compulsive swinger of the bat. He lives by his wits at the crease. But that`s the way he has hammered and perhaps infuriated bowlers.

"We don`t instruct our batsmen how to go about a task. They have played enough cricket to understand situations,`` was Ranatunga`s wry comment.

Jayasuriya`s great success story is how he became a consistent unconventional opener. There has been a complete transformation in Jayasuriya since the days in which he played the negative role of firing the ball into the rough from round the wicket in Test cricket and as a mere prop in the late middle-order.

From a bits-and-pieces man who did enough to warrant a place in the one-day team, what has made Jayasuriya`s career far more re- markable is that he has adjusted so well to the task of giving bowling the charge when the ball is new, the fielders are in and the adrenalin is flowing. He is today a far more confident person who is capable of believing that he can take on the best at their own game and match, or better them, for sheer aggression. Those qualities were in full display during the Wills World Cup and, now in Singapore.

Jayasuriya came to the World Cup with 1776 runs from 98 one- dayers at an average of 19.73 - nothing exceptional for a batsman who was to prove how valuable he is to his team ahead of cricket personalities like Tendulkar and Mark Waugh. But the 71 wickets just about reflected his all-round ability. He held Sri Lanka`s record for the highest individual innings in one-day cricket - 140 and the best bowling figures - 6 for 20. However, the batting record was taken away from him by Aravinda de Silva who scored 145 against Kenya at Kandy in the Wills World Cup game.

For all his brilliant and entertaining exploits in the middle, Jayasuriya was not a specialist opener and a devastating one at that. The shift to the opener`s slot came in the Hero Cup match against Zimbabwe at Patna in 1993-4. Jayasuriya made 23, 27 and 18 in his first three games in the new position with Mahanama as his partner.

However, he held the place only temporarily because he was once again shifted lower down the order on the tours to India and Sharjah that followed. It was not until the Pakistan tour to Sri Lanka in 1994-5 that Jayasuriya gained a permanency in the open- ing slot. Three consecutive half-centuries (77, 54 and 50) in the first three games revealed his potential.

Although Zimbabwe didn`t offer him much, the following tour to South Africa for the Mandela trophy saw him make a career best 140 in a rain-ruined game against New Zealand at Bloemfontein. Jayasuriya blasted six sixes and nine fours on his way to a 144- ball innings which was his first maiden one-day century. After a quiet start he destroyed the New Zealand attack and eclipsed the previous highest score by a Sri Lankan - 121 by Roy Dias against India at Bangalore in 1982-3.

Since playing in the company of Brian Lara, Jimmy Adams, Michael Atherton, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Shane Thomson, Chris Cairns, Mark Ram- prakash, Narendra Hirwani, Aaqib Javed, Basit Ali, Mushtaq Ahmed, Venkatapathy Raju and our own Romesh Kaluwitharana in the 1989 World Youth Cup in Australia, Jayasuriya, a product of St. Serva- tius College, Matara has come a long way.

He went to Pakistan with the Sri Lanka `B` team and displayed his potential with back to back double centuries in the unofficial Test series against Pakistan `B`. It seemed an international career was cut out for him.

But the road to attaining that had not been easy. Jayasuriya may have shed a few hairs getting there, but there is no doubt about his batting, which is hair-raising.

The apologetic assassin - Richard Hobson

Sanath Jayasuriya's Buddhism urges compassion to all creatures. His batting is based on precisely the opposite impulse. Ahead of England's Test series in Sri Lanka, the Wisden Cricketer explores the contradictions of a fascinating man

The first minutes in the company of Sanath Jayasuriya raise a thought that must have crossed many a mind these past two decades. How does a softly spoken, moon-faced man given to meditation twice a day morph into one of the most violent hitters that cricket has known, as soon as he picks up a bat? Well, the answer is both clear and comforting. In a world where size increasingly seems to matter, the little Sri Lankan reminds us that skill and timing also pack a punch.

At 38, and approaching the end of his career, Jayasuriya is ready for one final dart in December at the England bowling. His decision to retire from Test cricket last year was the premature response to pressure from selectors, but the next time he makes that call it will be of his own volition - and it will be final. "I have happy memories of playing against England," he says. "I guess this will be the final time that we meet, so I want to create a few more."

His stats are impressive enough but Jayasuriya is more significant even than these figures show. The year 1996 is to Sri Lanka what 1966 is to England, and while Arjuna Ranatunga may have lifted the World Cup that night in Lahore, it was Jayasuriya, officially named Most Valuable Player for the competition, who became their Geoff Hurst. According to legend, he revolutionised the game during those weeks, developing the role of pinch-hitter by cutting, pulling and driving from the very start, when opposition captains were stymied by fielding restrictions.

The truth is a little less dramatic. "It makes me laugh when I hear it described as a revolution," he says, emphasising the point with a chuckle. "Other opening batsmen had played the same way, in fact Kalu [Romesh Kaluwitharana] and I played the same way in Australia that winter. I can only think that people were surprised because they had not done their homework - they did not see Sri Lanka as a threat. Maybe they thought we would not have the confidence to bat like it in the big matches. But it was working, so why change?"

Eleven years on, Jayasuriya can rattle off the scores game by game, from the game against India, when they chased 271, to the final, when Aravinda de Silva's brilliant hundred took them past Australia with only three wickets down. His own competition reached its apogee in the quarter-final against England, when he struck 82 from 44 balls, including the then fastest World Cup fifty, from 30 balls. "England were not as good as they had been four years earlier," he says. "If they underestimated us, they were not alone."

Jayasuriya's humble background made his rise all the more remarkable. The distance between home in the fishing village of Matara and the capital of Colombo was further in cricket terms than merely 100 miles of road leading north along the coast. Had Jayasuriya not decided to move in his late teens, before the Youth World Cup in Australia in 1988, he might never have broken into the national side. Even now he believes that those in what he calls the "out-stations" of the country have early ground to recover.

Despite being part of a Buddhist family, he went to the Catholic St Servatius School. It was only five minutes from his house. Equipment was a luxury beyond all the boys; Jayasuriya himself did not own a bat until he was 18. "I used to pick one from the school bag," he says. "There would be four or five in there and, if you opened like I did most of the time, you could have first pick. When I got out, I would often hand it to the new guy when we crossed."

When Merv Hughes was bowling, I struggled to watch the ball. I kept looking at his face, because it was so different

He made his Sri Lanka one-day debut, against Australia, in front of more than 45,000 people at the MCG on Boxing Day 1989. "When Merv Hughes was bowling, I struggled to watch the ball," he says. "I kept looking at his face, because it was so different. I found it really hard to come from school and club cricket, but that was the gap we had to bridge. It made us tough and I think my upbringing away from Colombo helped to make me tough as well."

On his first tour the backroom staff consisted merely of a manager and an assistant manager, who also took charge of the coaching. Jayasuriya cites the arrival of Dav Whatmore as coach and Alex Kontouri as a physio and fitness trainer as key to Sri Lanka's emergence. Whatmore was influential in the inspired decision to promote Jayasuriya to open in both forms. "For those five years up to then I never felt that I had an exact place that was mine in Test or one-day cricket," Jayasuriya says.

Since 1996, Sri Lanka have carried an allure for opposition cricket boards. Crowds the world over suddenly wanted to see Jayasuriya and his colleagues. Selectors, meanwhile, have set about finding a Jayasuriya of their own. His legacy can be seen in almost every successful opening partnership in one-day cricket these past ten years. It is pertinent to ask whether, without Jayasuriya, we would have seen the likes of Adam Gilchrist and Virender Sehwag play with such abandon.

But the biggest impact was on Sri Lanka itself. "When a new player comes into the side, I know it will not be long before he asks me about 1996," Jayasuriya says. "Younger guys would not have started playing cricket, or tried to make a living from it, but for what we did in that World Cup. They tell me that they wanted to play cricket because of that. They want to know how it happened, how we did it. You realise how important it was for our country and our cricket."

Jayasuriya blossomed amid greater expectations. Within months he cracked the fastest fifty in one-day cricket, from 17 balls, against Pakistan. The following year he was part of the Sri Lanka team that scored a Test-record 952 for 6, against India at Colombo. He entered the final day 326 not out, 50 short of beating Brian Lara's then record individual score of 375. "I was out for 340 and people asked me whether I was disappointed," he says. It is, in fact, his favourite Test innings, just ahead of his 213 against England at The Oval in 1998.

That game is best remembered for Muttiah Muralitharan's 16 wickets, and Jayasuriya has sympathy for those England batsmen and the hundreds of others to be tormented by the extraordinary spin bowler. He remembers the first time he encountered Murali himself, in the nets at the Nondescripts CC ground in Colombo around 1991. "He had taken a lot of wickets at St Anthony's College in Kandy. Somebody had sent him to our training and he spun the ball like nothing I had ever seen. I asked him how he did it and he just pulled a face as if to say 'Did what?'"

I ask whether back then, before Murali was a superstar who polarised opinion, Jayasuriya had ever privately questioned the action. "Never," he replies straight away. "From the way he walked you could see he was a different shape. His arm was not flat by his side because his elbow was bent; it was always obvious to me." There is clear admiration for his colleague. "Everywhere we go there is pressure on Murali from other teams," he says. "We see him as our unique bowler, our special one. We decided very early on to always give him full support."

Jayasuriya never took that to the extent of leading off a team, as Ranatunga had seen fit previously. "Arjuna was not bad for the game," Jayasuriya says. "He was bad for the opposition because he said what he thought and built us into a better side. For his mental strength, he was one of our great cricketers." As characters the captains were chalk and cheese, but Sri Lanka did not lose their toughness when Jayasuriya took over in 1999. Indeed, the 2000-01 series against England, fanned by dreadful umpiring, was contested as bitterly as anything on Ranatunga's watch.

He was in charge during a transitional phase when the likes of Ranatunga and Aravinda de Silva were replaced as leading lights by the emerging Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara. He admitted being "a bit frightened" at taking office, but stood down four years later with a record of 18 wins from 38 Tests. "After a while I found captaincy quite easy," he says. "As more and more new guys came in, they looked up to me in the way that I looked up to Arjuna. Time changes so many things."

He continued in the ranks for three more years before the surprising decision to concentrate solely on the shorter form. "The selectors wanted me to do that," he says. "I was not ready, but I thought that if they were in that frame of mind, there was no point in hanging around to be dropped. Then a new guy came in, Ashantha de Mel, who said I should still be playing. I had not wanted to retire, so it was an easy decision."

The comeback was at Trent Bridge last year. Sri Lanka won to level the series, and Jayasuriya proceeded to hit two hundreds in the subsequent one-dayers. The assault at Headingley, when he and Upul Tharanga put on 286 in 31.5 overs, has become a reference point for England's one-day woes. Kabir Ali and Tim Bresnan, who shared the new ball, have not played since. "I am sorry about that," Jayasuriya says, sounding quite sincere. "But I did want to prove a point."