Funday Times

The fast and the furious
By S.R. Pathiravithana
When he was small Malinga never thought that he would ever become a star. The second of a family of three boys Separamadu Lasith Malinga was born on August 28, 1983 to a rather poor family in the hamlet of Ratgama, north of Galle.

From his small days it was either schooling, climbing (trees) or swimming for the three boys. They used to swim across the river that runs through their village to visit their aunt who lived on the other side and climb the king coconut trees before swimming back home. Whenever they were not engaged in either of those exercises they played cricket like most Sri Lankan children do.

Malinga always wanted to bowl fast. As they used to play softball cricket the fastest way of delivering the tennis ball to the other end of the wicket was to bowl square-arm. At this Malinga was very proficient.

At the age of seventeen Malinga started playing for his first school Vidyaloka MV Galle. This was leather-ball cricket, but Malinga kept on bowling the way he thought was most effective and during one match he was spotted by the master-in-charge of cricket at Mahinda College, Keerthi Dharmapriya, who promptly made an opening for him at Mahinda, which is the biggest educational institution in Southern Sri Lanka.

By this time the cricketing circles in Galle were talking about this new seventeen year-old fast bowling prospect. Champaka Ramanayake, Sri Lanka Cricket’s fast bowling coach had one look at him and wanted him to join the Cricket Foundation. There, under the guidance of Ramanayake, Malinga started learning the extra skills in fast bowling. At the same time Ramanayake also got Malinga to attend practices at Galle Cricket Club. There, Ramanayake encouraged Malinga and asked him to bowl fast and straight.

It did not take very long. One day Ramanayake who was also the opening bowler for Galle CC strained his neck and Malinga was drafted into the main team. From his beginnings at Vidyaloka MV, turning out for Galle CC was a revelation for this young man. However young Malinga kept his head above his shoulders and finished the game with eight wickets in the bag.

By this time Malinga was capturing the power of speed and was enjoying the sight of batsmen crumbling under his deliveries. At the same time, for Ramanayake this was a toast, as here was another young prospect coming from his own back yard - Galle.

One day Ramanayake hauled Malinga and brought him to give a little taste of his new discovery to the ‘big boys’ in the national squad. The boys from the national squad were rather bewildered to see this slightly built young man standing there who was supposed to be bowling very-very fast. No sooner he started to trundle, they believed that every word they had heard about him was very true.

A year had not passed since Malinga had started playing leather-ball cricket. He now found him-self in the big-league, playing against the very cricketers whom he had seen only on TV. Then in a few months he found himself turning out for the Sri Lanka “A” team, knocking the daylights out of the Indian ‘A’ team and the Pakistan ‘A’ team.

Not before long Malinga was called up for national duty. He was on tour with the Sri Lanka team on his way to Australia on their two-test tour. The first match that Malinga played for the ‘big’ team was the game against the Australian Northern Territory Chief Minister’s Xl at Darwin. A team that comprised several big names in Australian cricket. In this game the tiny Sri Lankan atom gave the Australians a glimpse of what they would have to expect in the games to come as he finished with a haul of 6 for 90. With this performance Malinga sealed himself a place in the Sri Lanka Test team.

Malinga’s first Test victim was Australian middle order Batsman Darren Lehmann. He had Lehmann in all sorts of trouble and had him caught at gully. But it was a no ball, and soon afterwards Malinga came back to trap him leg before the wicket. He finished that inning with two wickets for 50 runs and followed it up with another haul of 4 for 42 in the second.

In the second Test once again Malinga bowled well in the first innings to return with four wickets for 149 runs. All in all by the end of his first tour Malinga had already become a household name in Sri Lanka and the foreign press already called him names like ‘the sling-arm express’, ‘Pocket Rocket’ etc.

While in school Malinga did well in his studies too. At the GCE Ordinary Level Examination, he had five D’s, four C’s and a simple pass. Malinga still has not found employment or a place to live in Colombo. When he has no cricket in Colombo he goes back to his village at Ratgama. Though a national star now, he does not forget to play some softball cricket with his friends at the village ground.

Back to Mirror Magazine