‘Cool it’ orders CA to gallant Gillespie

By S.R. Pathiravithana

Former Australian fast bowler Jason Gillespie is hoping to meet champion Lankan off spinner Muttiah Muralitharan and iron out the barracking issue. Cricket Australia (CA) spoke to the Australian fast bowler who is still under CA contract about his comments regarding the visiting spinner after Sri Lanka Cricket sent a strong letter of protest.

Earlier Gillespie in his autobiography said new laws allowing bowlers to bend their elbows up to 15 degrees had helped Muttiah Muralitharan and Shoaib Akhtar. Gillespie followed this quip by saying that should the Australian crowds barrack the Lankan off spinner he would have to grin and bear it and asked if the authorities were prepared to evict about 5000 people from the grounds.

Commenting on the issue the Sri Lanka Chief Executive Duleep Mendis said his Australian counterpart James Sutherland had responded to the Lankan protest by apologising on behalf of Gillespie and said they had spoken to the fast bowler about his untimely comments.

Meanwhile Sri Lanka Interim Committee secretary K. Mathivanan answering a question posed by The Sunday Times said they were monitoring the situation Down Under.

Mr. Mathivanan said that at present Sri Lanka had no contingency plan on any issues erupting in case spectators abuse Muttiah Muralitharan and that in such an event tour manager Sriyan Samararatne would have to deal with the matter. Australia has not been a happy hunting ground for Muralitharan since he was called by umpire Darrel Hair during the boxing-day Test in 1995. Thereafter he was also subjected to crowd abuse in a later tour.

The current tour is very important for the Lankan off-spinner as he needs only nine more wickets to overtake the Australian legend Shane Warne’s all time record of 708 wickets.