Asanka cried only once for cricket
View(s):Asanka Gurusinha’s eyes watered when he was hit in the box by Craig McDermott en route to a hard-earned Test century at the MCG in 1995, and again when a contact lens became dislodged that day, but cricket made him cry only once, after Shane Warne snatched certain victory away from Sri Lanka in Colombo three years previously.
Asanka Gurusinha was considered Sri Lanka’s most successful No.3 batsman.
Gurusinha had made a century in the first innings of that match and was 31 not out in the second, but stranded at the other end as the pudgy Warne skittled the tail. ”For all the players who played in that game, it will always be there,” Gurusinha said. ”It was the biggest disappointment of our cricket lives.”
It was Warne’s first imprint on Test cricket. In the next match, Muttiah Muralitharan made his debut for Sri Lanka, confounding the great Allan Border, who could not immediately say whether he was bowling off- or leg-spin.
Now Australia and Sri Lanka play for the Warne-Muralitharan trophy. Asked if, in these humble beginnings, he foresaw such a replete and storied future, Gurusinha said: ”No. That’s the honest truth.”
Warne, he said, had dismissed only tailenders in that match. He was nagging like Glenn McGrath, which was unusual for a leg-spinner, but he rarely bowled a wrong-un, and made it obvious by its extra flight when he did, and so did not trouble left-handers. Murali, he said, could turn the ball from the start.
”The question was, can he keep doing it?” he said.
Murali’s watershed was that MCG Test three years later, in which Gurusinha’s gutsy century was far overshadowed by the Boxing Day calling of his compatriot for throwing. ”We heard before the game that it was going to happen,” he said. ”But on the morning of the match we were told it’s not going to happen.”
Because Darrell Hair called Murali from the bowler’s end, Gurusinha thought at first that it was for overstepping. When the truth dawned, he felt angry. The cricket world became a fraught place. Ultimately, Murali and the rule-makers met each other halfway, measured in degrees. ”It changed world cricket,” Gurusinha said.
Gurusinha, distinguished by his dark beard and resolute batsmanship, is a near constant in the early annals of Austro-Sri Lankan Test cricket. He would have played in their first encounter in this country, in Perth in 1988, except that he broke his finger in the nets two days previously; he can feel it still.
He played in a two-match series the next year, in Brisbane and Hobart, against an Australian team still bouncing from its Ashes plunder. Sri Lanka was proud to extend Australia to five days in both. ”In Brisbane, they didn’t even print day five tickets,” he said.
In 1992 in Sri Lanka, he was witness to the emergence of Warne and Murali. In 1995 in Perth, he played against Ricky Ponting on his debut.
Gurusinha already had been struck by an aspect of Ponting’s batsmanship in a warm-up match the previous week in Devonport. Unusually for Antipodean batsmen in Gurusinha’s experience, Ponting could play high-grade spin. ”I thought he would go a long way,” he said. ”But not that far.”
The Melbourne melodrama followed. Gurusinha remembers his pride in making a hundred against McGrath, Warne, Craig McDermott, Paul Reiffel and the off-spin of Mark Waugh, then the best attack in the world, but also that by match’s end, the teams were neiter mixing nor talking.
At the end of the subsequent one-day series in Sydney, combative Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga instructed his team not to shake hands with the Australians. Deliberately, Gurusinha stayed in the dressing room, thinking of his friendship with Ian Healy. ”If ‘Heals’ came to me and shook hands, I couldn’t have looked the other way,” he said. ”But I felt sorry for some of the young guys.”
A third Test followed, in Adelaide. One evening, Australian captain Mark Taylor walked into the Sri Lankan dressing room, beers in hand. Gurusinha admired his spirit, but Australia had already decided to boycott Sri Lanka in the World Cup the next month, and the damage had been done.
As fate would have it, Australia and Sri Lanka met in the final, in Lahore. All tournament, Sri Lanka had chased by choice, backing its batting heft. On the morning of the final, Imran Khan told Ranatunga that he needed to bat first. Gurusinha remembered that Ranatunga smiled and said: ”I’m not doing what he says, I’m doing what we’ve decided.”
At night, a heavy dew fell, turning the ball into a cake of soap. Aravinda de Silva made a century and shared with Gurusinha a long partnership that made victory a formality. In his mind’s eye, Gurusinha can put himself out there still. ”Right from the first ball I faced, from Fleming: it was an inside edge for four,” he said.
But later that year, still just 30, Gurusinha retired. ”It’s not a lie that Arjuna and I didn’t see eye to eye at that time. It was tough at first. I’d given up something I was good at. But I realised my heart wasn’t in it. There was too much politics.’He had family in Melbourne, and previously had played two seasons for North Melbourne, so moved his young family here, found a job in publishing, and stayed. He barracks for Australia in most sports, but the All-Blacks in rugby and, of course, Sri Lanka in cricket. The trademark beard has long gone. ”Too many grey hairs,” he said, but at least his smile is now visible.
Sri Lanka has beaten Australia only once in Test cricket, never in Australia. In 1989, said Gurusinha, it was strong in batting, but lacked penetration in attack. Frustratingly to him,”But it always comes down to the same big question: do we have the bowlers to take 20 wickets?” he said. ”You’ve got to have that extra pace, to push a batsman onto the back foot. A medium-pacer will get slaughtered.” Mind you.
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