Congratulations Damaadji! You've Done Us Proud-23/07/2010

By Raj Narayan, 23/07/2010

Congratulations Damaadji! You've Done Us Proud

(GOOD TO SEE THIS HEADLINE, SANYA'S HUSBAND SHOHAIB OF PAKISTAN,MURALI OF SRI LANKA WHOSE WIFE IS FROM CHENNAI, AND MANY MORE...EMOTIONS FOR THEM WILL DEFINTLY STRENGTHEN TIES BETWEEN TWO COUNTRIES...AN ANOTHER ACHIEVMENT AND ASPECT OF SPORTS.)


The end of an era is always a bitter sweet one and so it was for Muthiah Muralitharan who moved from the Test arena into Test history with that trademark smile plastered over his expressive face and the round eyes glistening with a mixture of happiness and sorrow.



The man who almost single-handedly changed Sri Lanka from the cricketing world's favorite whipping boys to World Champions and a Test match powerhouse in his two decade long career, will walk away into the sunset mighty happy.

The Pied Piper (Murali means flute in Sanskrit) of cricket, who lured many a batsmen to their doom with his guile, will forever cherish the red cherry that brought him eight wickets in his last encounter and helped him close the career with a whopping 800 test scalps.

For, if ever one could recall a perfect script to a romanticised farewell, this was it. The grateful Sri Lankan cricket authorities and fans thanked their first ever match-winner in an ostentatious manner with hoardings all over Galle stadium, the venue of Murali's final test appearances.



Afterall, Murali was leaving behind him the legacy of a bagful of wickets and a bigger bagful of bowling records that made him the equivalent of Sir Donald Bradman in the bowling department. He fired the imagination of a civil war-torn country. Barring the disastrous Tsunami that ravaged Sri Lanka some years ago, it was only Murali who made the island nation forget strife and join hands.

That Murali's influence on Sri Lankan and world cricket has been immense is stating the obvious. He was obviously the country's first and for many years its only match winner and stock bowler all rolled into one. Remember the time when captain Arjuna Ranatunga got him to bowl 75 overs in an innings all by himself against India?

From a global perspective, off-spinners had been shelved into cold storage with the arrival of the slam-bang variety of cricket. It was Murali who brought out the magic in an era known more for the seam and swing variety. He along with Shane Warne suddenly ignited the imagination of kids who now wanted to turn the ball square instead of blasting the opponent's head off.



So much has been written about his records in the recent past that it is wasteful to mention it again. Suffice to say that any bowler who takes five wickets in an innings 66 times and ten scalps a match 22 times has to be the greatest. In addion to this massive tally, the man also took four wickets in an innings (equivalent to a test 50) 47 times in his career makes this friendly Kandy-man a statistician's delight.

An interesting factor is that his last two ten-wicket hauls came against India and Bangladesh in the tests at Colombo in July 2008 and Dhaka in December of that year. Thereafter, Murali managed only 26 wickets from eight tests in the next two years which got him to 792 tests wickets. To say that age was catching up would again be stating the obvious.

On the eve of the Galle Test, an entire country was praying for eight wickets to round off what has been a superlative career. Without for one moment doubting the man's ability, it must be said that if any team could have answered Sri Lanka's collective prayer, it has to be India.



And so it was that Indian batsmen kept falling to the spinner's guile at Galle. Towards the end of day five, even Indian cricket fans prayed that our batsmen should fall to Murali. As a nation we love world beaters and so most of us joined the celebration of an Asian (in Murali's case a Lankan Tamil who married an Indian) holding the world record that could take some breaking in the future.

So, if Murali indeed had a romanticised farewell from tests, our role in ensuring that everything went according to the script cannot be undermined. Can you imagine Ricky Ponting and his brash Australians giving Murali those eight scalps? No way! Ponting would have instructed his batters to play Murali carefully and get out to Malinga!

Barring someone like Steve Waugh who scripted his last test with a fighting innings that saved Australia the match and the series against India, how many other players can we recall who went into history books with a match winning last test?



Sceptics would even point to the oft-heard comment that any player who wanted to return to form only had to play against India to do so. And Murali was lucky enough to have scriped his farewell appearance against the one team in world cricket who revel in others victories.
With Murali, we have an added incentive. He is after all our "Damaad" (son-in-law) and it is in our tradition to treat sons-in-law as God's gift to our families.

So, congratulations once again Damaadji. You have done us and the entire cricketing world proud with your exploits. We just hope you come back to India and help us create a breed of spinners who will become work-horses for Indian cricket just as you were for your country.