The importance of Sunny- Sunil Gavaskar

 A few weeks ago, shortly after Sunil Gavaskar had delivered the first Dilip Sardesai Memorial lecture at the Cricket Club of India, a twentysomething man asked me if Gavaskar had been a better batsman than Sachin Tendulkar, reducing me to a hum-and-haw wreck. I could understand the legitimacy of his curiosity, but was there a legitimate answer?

I must here confess to being a Gavaskarphile. Who from my vintage isn't? The passage of time sometimes tends to either exaggerate or diminish the value of the past, but the Gavaskar phenomenon, all things considered, makes for one of the great stories of not just modern sport, but also Indian life.

I was 15 when he exploded into the Indian consciousness with his record-breaking exploits in the West Indies in 1970-71, and since then have followed his amazing journey, largely for professional purposes, sometimes with deep personal flourishes, mostly with awe and admiration, but sometimes also with despair and anguish.

On my first few tours as a cricket writer I got to know first-hand not only of Gavaskar's supreme batting skills, but also the different facets to his persona. In Pakistan in 1982-83, he scored in excess of 400 runs, but became increasingly moody as the series started going awry and his captaincy came under threat. Despite that, his innate sense of humour never deserted him. In Hyderabad (Sind), after India had lost the Test and the series, I remember Gavaskar being asked by a journalist how he would have liked India's batsmen to play the rampaging Imran Khan. "The best way would be to put a sightscreen between him and us," he replied with a straight face.

This humour could, of course, move from being self-deprecatory to caustic in the matter of minutes - or a few tours. In 1985, when India went to Sri Lanka, Gavaskar was still determined to bat in the middle order, much to the chagrin of the captain, Kapil Dev. Soon after arrival, asked informally by the press corps if he had given up opening, Gavaskar was vehement in denial. "I will open doors and bottles, but opening the innings is another matter," he said with a smile.

Our paths have criss-crossed several times over 30 years, and we even worked together at the same publication, Sportsweek, for a while, but I can't claim to know Gavaskar intimately. Apart from his immediate family and a few close friends, I doubt anybody does. Like most virtuosos - in any walk of life - he can be aloof to the world around him, living out his personal convictions with an inner strength that makes him almost immune to what people think.

This was more pronounced in his playing days, when he could be stubborn, obstinate, tantrum-prone and sanctimonious - apart from being a record-breaking batsman. Sometimes it would appear that he was at war with the world, sometimes with himself; both were probably true. He fought furiously for pride and self-respect at a time when Indian cricket was easily dismissed; he also raged for perfection as a batsman because he wanted to be the best, no less. Not all the time was he in the right. At times he could be easily riled by trifles or be seduced into petty-fogging to prove a minor point. In his time he has had a few memorable altercations with umpires, opponents, fellow players and administrators, which he would see as silly now. As captain, he sometimes stretched defensive tactics to bizarre levels (with active help from rival captain Keith Fletcher in 1981, it must be added), which accentuated his "mean" image. More infamously, he once batted 60 overs for 36 runs in the 1975 World Cup, and in 1981almost conceded a Test match after getting into a spat with Australian umpires.

But over a long career and life these prickly facets must be balanced by several other sanguine ones, not all known, for a more balanced picture of the man. Gavaskar's general disposition is usually sunny, as his nickname goes. He has a sense of fun that can oscillate between the droll and the ribald, depending on the company he is in.

He is also a terrific after-dinner speaker because he is a splendid raconteur. In an informal setting he can be a great mimic, bringing to the fore the tremendous powers of observation that helped him read the game so well. He can hold his own in any company, be it Nelson Mandela or a Bollywood starlet. His world view is large, his knowledge vast, and he can be an engaging conversationalist.

He has been Indian cricket's strongest minder. Few mess with him when he has a cause to fight. He was in the forefront of championing players' rights and was instrumental (along with Bishan Bedi) in giving the cricketers' association voice and meaning. It must be a cause of some regret to him that the current players don't see the Players' Association as important anymore.

After he retired, when we worked together at Sportsweek, there was not a week in which I didn't see him try to help out cricketers less fortunate than him with their benefit matches or some other financial assistance. "These guys have given everything for the game, and deserve support," he would say.

Some years later he started the Champs Foundation - without too much fanfare or publicity - to provide financial help to needy and ailing sportspersons across disciplines. Also, during the 1993 riots in Mumbai, as is famously known, he went and rescued a Muslim family from a mob near his residence. 

 Students of psychology might see contradictions here, and they might not be entirely wrong; but then again, they wouldn't quite be completely right either. For, at his core, Gavaskar is no different from any of us: highly complex, but essentially human.

It is as cricketer that Gavaskar emerges unique and as one of the most towering personalities in the game. In a broader context, like Tendulkar, he was not just another cricketer but a metaphor for the country's aspirations and hopes.

In his tribute in Gavaskar: Portrait of a Hero, Peter Roebuck, writes, "[…] Such were his powers that he'd have been productive 50 years earlier or 50 years later; even in this hurrying world, some things do not change, the principles of batsmanship not least amongst them." But this is only half the saga. Gavaskar's very presence provided emotional and psychological security far beyond the parameters of a cricket field. He left an indelible impact on not just scorebooks but on the Indian psyche.

It intrigues me that not till his magnificent 221 in the heart-breaking run-chase at the Oval in 1979, which compelled Sir Len Hutton to call him the best opening batsman in the game, was Gavaskar's genius acknowledged worldwide, and he was rated alongside Viv Richards and Greg Chappell. By then, he had been playing for eight years and had scored more than 5000 runs! Sir Len, of course, had greater reason for empathy with Gavaskar, having been an opener himself.

There are several analyses and tributes that I can cite, but an anecdote involving another great player of the 80s, Javed Miandad, and a couple of his colleagues, perhaps puts things in the best perspective.

We were at Miandad's house in Lahore in 1989, celebrating his 100th Test match and in between the partying I asked the Pakistani maestro his opinion about Gavaskar. ''Many have played this game brilliantly but few have understood it as well as this man," said Miandad pointing in Gavaskar's direction. "He knows cricket like the back of his hand. Did you see his innings against us at Bangalore two years back?''

	Would there have been a Tendulkar as we know him if there was no Gavaskar

I had, and consider it perhaps the most skilful and poignant knock in Indian cricket history. Only one batsman in three innings of that Test match had crossed the 50-run mark. The ball turned square from day one, and India were to bat fourth chasing a little over 200 for victory. This was like climbing Mount Everest in a snowstorm. But Gavaskar was not to be fazed. With sublime technique and dogged determination, he mastered the conditions to keep India in the hunt even as wickets fell around him like nine pins.

On the rest day of the Test I went to interview Tauseef Ahmed, the offspinner, and his room-mate Iqbal Qasim, the left-arm spinner. The spin twins had reduced the Indian innings to rubble. Now only one man stood between them and victory: Gavaskar, unbeaten on 50-something. Tauseef and Qasim were usually chirpy souls, but on this day appeared so high-strung that they wouldn't even talk to each other.

"Woh Baba Adam ab tak khel raha hai [that old man is still batting],'' said Qasim, breaking the silence. ''Bat hain ya deewar? (does he have a bat or a wall?)'' Tauseef chipped in. ''We've not been able to sleep because of the tension."

The next day, just when it appeared that Gavaskar would win the match single-handed, he fell for 96. Imran Khan called it the best innings he had seen. India eventually lost that Test match by a small margin of 16 runs, and Gavaskar bowed out of Test cricket a forlorn, but never to be forgotten, hero.

It's almost 22 years since he retired, but memories of his exploits are still fresh. He arrived with a bang in 1970-71, scoring 774 runs in his debut Test series (still a record), and finished with a flourish, scoring 96 in his last Test innings, a century in his last first-class match, and a maiden hundred in his penultimate one-day game - all in 1987, at age 38. He retired as he always wanted to: when people asked why, not why not.

Which, of course, brings me back to the original query of the twentysomething lad at the CCI about Gavaskar and Tendulkar. I still don't have an answer, but I have a counter-query: Would there have been a Tendulkar as we know him if there was no Gavaskar? 

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'I speak from the heart, not the head' - Sunil Gavaskar

How differently do you see this game at 60 from the way you saw it at 20?
It is different in the sense that there is a much wider following than in the 1960s, when I was growing up. Then it was a majority male following, but now I think it's fairly mixed. You've got women of all ages interested in the game, thanks to the Twenty20 mainly.

Would you have been happier playing today than when you played? With far more money, and fame.
Maybe not, for the simple reason that there was an innocence about the game when I was kid, which is perhaps not quite there now. I think I would prefer the innocence of the game that was there when I was a teenager.

Earlier, cricket was not just a sport. It was also about the great qualities of life it represented. Has there been a fundamental shift in the way people approach the game today?
Not to a great extent. But for instance, when people didn't do the right thing, the saying used was "That's not cricket". Now that does not hold as much water as it did then. Mainly because, I think, the game has become commercial and therefore some of the old values have gone out of it. But it's still a fantastic game. I think it is a far more attractive game to watch from a spectator's point of view.

Has the romance of cricket fallen victim to money?
Well, I guess it's now a win-at-all-cost system. The unpleasant things that happen in the game have come to the fore, so therefore I think in a sense the romance is gone. The appreciation of the game, whether it was by your own team or by the opposition, is not quite so much. You rarely see fielders go up to applaud somebody getting a half-century any more. Players are aware that the TV cameras are on them. So they might have just one clap and that's it - almost as if to say that if you have more than two or three claps for the opposition, then it's a kind of weakness. I don't think that's a correct thing.

Has technique become redundant or superfluous? Look at Virender Sehwag and Adam Gilchrist and the kind of success they have enjoyed. Do you think this is the modern approach to cricket?
I have always believed that technique has never been a huge part of sport. Temperament is your No. 1 thing. You could have the best technique in the world, but if your temperament is bad, you'll be nowhere. While if the temperament is good and you don't have great technique, you will be able to do well. You have the ability inside you which makes you hang in there, makes you go on. That's what separates the men from the boys.

So does approach, upbringing and the attitude towards the game. The difference in the style that you see from the 1950s, 60s or 70s is the upbringing. In those days [you were told] not to hit the ball in the air, not to take risks. Coaches today encourage youngsters to play aerial shots or unorthodox shots, try different things. That is what has made the game so attractive.

What is the biggest issue confronting the game today?
The gap that is developing between some of the Test-playing countries and the others. A few Test-playing countries have developed fantastic cricket, while others have stagnated or gone down. Now that is the biggest challenge - to be able to make all the 10 Test-playing countries into pretty much equal cricketing powers. That is never going to happen. But even if you have six countries, that will be a big step forward.

In recent times you have been a vehement critic of on-field sledging.
I have never been against banter. But sledging is nothing really but abuse of the opposition. Sometimes players get away saying things to the opposition on the field that they would never get away with saying to anybody off the field. One day this might lead to a physical confrontation on the field. Why do you want get to that stage?

Are you trying to tell me the Bradmans, the Benauds, the Cowdreys, the Soberses did that? They didn't. There might be a joke or two, where even the butt of the joke laughs. A little gamesmanship did not affect us either. Today it is not that.

I don't mind the four-letter word thrown into a sentence. That's not a problem at all. It's when the "you so and so" gets in there that it becomes personal. That is what I feel is an absolutely unnecessary part of the game. We never heard the Merchants, Hazares, Amarnaths ever say anything abusive to their mates, so why should it happen here?

You were like a one-man spearhead, especially against England and Australia, in several matters, as player and even later. Was this part of some deep-seated anti-colonialism in you?
Not at all. I have been vocal about it because I have seen it happening. It was happening increasingly, so I've spoken about it. Those who say that this is a part of the game are talking nonsense. Banter yes, abuse no.

Do you sense some kind of resentment to India's rise to power, at least financial power?
No, I don't think so. That's not a factor at all. You just want the game to be a good sport at the end of it without people abusing each other.

Let me explain. The Roger Federer versus Andy Roddick 2009 Wimbledon final was an epic game. If Roddick serves at 120 miles per hour, Federer trying to hit a backhand gets the top edge of the racket and the ball lands on the baseline, allowing Federer to get an absolutely fluky lucky point. Would Roddick abuse Federer because of the luck that he has? Then why should a bowler stand at his end and abuse a batsman who got an inside edge that went to the boundary, or who played and missed half a dozen times? Federer and Roddick are playing for a major title and for millions of pounds, for rankings and stuff like that. Why should it be different in cricket? Why go for wild abuse in a match? That's wrong. The game will be better off without all this. It's also a bad influence on young, upcoming players watching on television.

Did something early in your career provoke these sentiments against sledging?
It happened to me only once. I was staggered that a player who was making his debut in Tests - and I was well past 100 Tests at the time - stood at the end of his follow-through after I had cut him over slips for a boundary and swore at me. I couldn't believe it. That was probably the only occasion.

What do you think about the Twenty20-versus-Tests debate? Is Test cricket under threat?
I don't think Test cricket is under threat. It has been there for more than 100 years. Test cricket will become far more attractive as it became after the advent of one-day cricket. We saw more results, less dot-balls, and it became far more result-oriented. The same thing will happen with the influence of Twenty20. There will be a lot more runs scored in a day than earlier, which means plenty of results and more excitement for viewers at the ground and on television.

	Tendulkar tops Gavaskar's wishlist of cricketers

You don't see the demise of bowlers, as some players predict?
Look at the way the bowlers have come back in the Twenty20 game. They have learnt how to bowl, what fields to set, and suddenly they have got clobbered less. They will get occasionally clobbered by good batsmen, but they are also striking back. In the ICC World Twenty20, bowlers probably got as many players-of-the-match awards as batsmen or allrounders.

You first played Tests for India 40 years ago. Is there anything you would do differently now?
There are a couple things I would obviously want to do if given another chance. Like our World Cup match [1975], where I got 36 not out. I would throw my wicket away now - which I wasn't brought up to do. Earlier on, the mindset was different. I think today I might feel a little more flexible as far as throwing-a-wicket-type situation is concerned.

Even in the Melbourne incident, where I was provoked into asking Chetan [Chauhan] to leave the field, let me clarify that this decision was not taken at first but when I was making my way back to the pavilion and was almost 10 yards down when I was abused by the Australians. That's when I came back and took Chetan away. I wouldn't come back to do this today, because as a captain, whatever the provocation, I should have kept my cool. Yes, these are the two things I would have definitely changed.

People feel that SMG is mellowing and then some new controversy comes up. Have you mellowed or not?
[Laughs] I don't know… If I feel strongly about something, I say it. The problem is I haven't learnt to use my head when I speak or I write, despite doing it for all these years. I still feel with my heart and say something and then a storm is created. Using words that cause little or no offence is a creative activity. But I write or speak from the heart and not the head.

But you can deal with criticism better now?
Because I no longer feel the pressures of performing.

When is the definitive autobiography coming?
Maybe I am writing too much. I have got columns and match reports, so maybe that's dulled the need to write. Besides, my first autobiography [Sunny Days] created a storm. Again I used my heart and not my head. Perhaps the usage of words could have conveyed the same meaning without causing offence. So if I have to write a definitive book, it would have to be honest. Some big reputations might get a bit of a dent once again. So why…

You have never pushed your son Rohan, but do you have any sense of disappointment that he could not go the distance with the India cap?
Look, I wanted him to be a good human being. For me that was the most important thing. Being a cricketer or a doctor, engineer, journalist was his choice. I just wanted him to be content with what he was. All the feedback that I get from all those who have interacted with him is nothing but positive, which pleases me no end. As far as his cricket is concerned, I keep teasing him all the time that his father used up all the luck and that's why he didn't have much left for him.

You batted perfectly in your career; you believe in structures and systems and temperament and in the hard logic of batting technique - everything to suggest that you are a very rational person. How do you explain your strong faith and trust in Sai Baba?

If I tried to go deep into that, I don't think people would understand. For me, he is everything. He is the ultimate. Just thinking of him gives me such a sense of completeness, such a sense of well-being. And the knowledge that he is looking after me is such a great sense of comfort, not just for me but also my whole family. It is hard to really describe it.

You have been pretty much identified as a loner, a man who lived in his own world as a player, even though cricket is a team game. But you do have a lot of friends.
If you meet my buddies or friends whom I hang out with, they'll give you a different picture. Even during my playing days. It is an image. if you play serious and risk-free cricket, the image you get is different. Even when I played, due to my prankster habits, I really got into trouble with some of my seniors. That's a part which wasn't seen by anybody. There was no media explosion like now. I thank God for it.

You have said in your book that the Indian dressing room wasn't the best place to be in.
Yes, maybe on an occasion or during an odd Test match or a series. But 99.9% of the time it was an absolute honour to share the room with my team-mates and play for the country. For all those guys who went out and gave it their best - it was a great honour to play with them. The happiest moments have been off the field. When I went to Hyderabad in the 1980s and saw Shivlal Yadav's house. To see Roger's [Binny] or Gundappa's [Viswanath] house gave me a lot of pleasure. They gave it everything, just like everyone else in the team, but they didn't get the endorsements or rewards that Kapil [Dev] or I got, or to an extent Ravi [Shastri] and Dilip [Vengsarkar] got. But believe you me, their contribution is no less than ours. If they hadn't been in the Indian dressing room and on the field then we wouldn't have been able to do half of what we did.

So when you look back at the 70s and 80s, some of the old enmities have been sandpapered and smoothed out?
Yes they are. To a great extent this was perception or speculation, not anything serious. People weren't that close to the scene and just got bits and pieces and jumped to their own conclusions. This doesn't happen only in cricket. We are all always waiting for a good story about something bad about others. I would look at it like that.

At one point of time you were considered to be a mercenary, yet you had the great ability to completely separate your mental processes when you went out to bat. Was this difficult?
I don't accept to being a mercenary. I didn't play for people simply because they paid me money. Yes, I spoke on behalf of the players, for what the players' body or the fraternity felt. For a better deal. I expressed myself maybe because they made me the spokesperson and then when I became the captain I was automatically the spokesperson of the team. I did take up their issues.

Even today, you speak to cricket officials and explain to them, you will be surprised how much they will do it for you. You have to be completely articulate. The administrators were happy to listen to us. We also learnt that having told them to do something, we had to be patient about it, so I don't think there was a too much of a problem.

Who would you pick as the all-time greats who came after your retirement who you would have loved to play against?
Tendulkar and Lara are the first who come to mind. Then of course Shane Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan, and Wasim Akram are some who also would be right up there. Another one would be Anil Kumble. He is such an unassuming player, with 600-plus wickets and the records that he has. He is a fantastic cricketer.

Once, you were seen as anti-establishment. Now you're on the governing council of the IPL and close to the BCCI, though now out of the ICC…
Cricket is my life. It is heaven, therefore, to be a part of it or do something for the game. [To be with the] ICC was a huge honour and privilege. Despite all that, if I do feel something strongly, I still say it. See, here I go again with my heart leading my head. 

 

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James Anderson - ENG

James Anderson - ENG

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I'm really happy to win ICC award: Dhoni

Not alien to records and milestones, Mahendra Singh Dhoni grabbed one more on Wednesday night when he became the first Indian to win the ICC ODI Player of the Year award and the star stumper-batsman is relishing it.

"It feels great to know that I am the first Indian player to get this particular award and it's very special because now I am in the company of a lot of other good cricketers," said an elated Dhoni in Dubai.


The Indian beat off tough competition from teammate Sachin Tendulkar, Australia fast bowler Nathan Bracken and Pakistan stalwart Mohammad Yousuf to take the prestigious award.

"Some fantastic players have won this award in the past and to be mentioned in their company is truly a humbling experience for me," said India's ODI and Twenty20 captain.

During the voting period, Dhoni played 39 ODIs and scored 1,298 runs at an average of 49.92 and at a rate of 82.46 runs per 100 balls faced. In that time he hit a century and nine fifties, making sure he led his team from the front.

Also in that time, the wicket-keeper in him captured 62 dismissals -- 46 catches and 16 stumpings, which is almost twice as many as the next best.

Currently ranked number one in the ICC Player Rankings for ODI batsmen, Dhoni thanked all for standing by him.

"I would like to thank the voting academy for considering me to be deserving of this award. I am really happy to get this it's a great privilege.

"I would like to thank the ICC, my home cricket board, my family, my team-mates and friends," said the star player. Dhoni also featured on the ICC ODI Team of the Year, picked by the ICC selection panel.

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Sourav Ganguly Interview:I am always under the scanner

Looking back at the period since I made my comeback, I have scored over 3,000 runs in both formats of international cricket, more than any other Indian batsman. Yet, I am under the scanner, and I just don't know why, asks the Bengal southpaw.

He is not known to mince words when it comes to lashing out at critics. So, when confronted with the question of his pedestrian showing with the bat in the ongoing IPL carnival, Sourav Ganguly went on the counter-offensive at the pre-match press meet, lamenting that he's always been the subject of criticism despite his good performances in recent months. Excerpts from the high-intensity media interaction:

You haven't had a good time with the bat in the IPL so far, and are now under the scanner...

I am always under the scanner, I don't know why. Despite doing well, I have always been under the scanner, all the time. Looking back at the period since I made my comeback, I have scored over 3,000 runs in both formats of international cricket, more than any other Indian batsman. Yet, I am under the scanner, and I just don't know why.

Do you think the franchises, whose teams are not doing well in the IPL, will put pressure on their players to get them results?

Pressure will always be there on the players, it has always been there, and it has always been like that. Whether you play for India, or Australia, or Knight Riders, pressure will always be there on you.

It's just a question of how you handle it. Whether you have done good or done badly, players are always under pressure.

After four defeats, Knight Riders are way behind in the standings. How do you look at it?

It's not that bad, the situation. If you notice, except for Mohali and Rajasthan, none of the other teams are too far away from us or from one another as far as points are concerned. Only these two teams are well ahead now, but the other teams are close.

The local Bengal players in your team have stood out with good performances in the IPL. Isn't it a heartening development for the local domestic players?

See, we shouldn't jump too much up and down over the successes of the local players in the IPL. Players like laxmi Ratan Shukla and Wriddhiman Saha are doing really well here, but remember, this is Twenty20 format. We shouldn't get carried away over their performances in just the IPL. For the local youngsters, the real test in their careers still lies in four-dayers and 50-over matches.

How important is the toss going to be in tomorrow's match against Bangalore Royal Challengers?

Toss is not going to be a big factor. In a 20-overs-a-side match, the toss hardly matters, and it won't matter in this match as well.

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Darrell Hair Exclusive Interview - The Australian umpire

Australia’s 53-year-old umpire Darrell Hair speaks about his current retirement plans from international cricket, how he critiques his own performances, player behaviour, his relationship with Murali after their infamous clash at Melbourne ten years ago and his new life in England.

I hear you have been offered a new two-year contract by the ICC so what are your current retirement plans because you announced last year you’re looking to quit the ICC after the 2007 World Cup?
I’m still not sure what will happen. My plan was to finish international umpiring after the World Cup and if I was going to commit to another two years I would really want to be satisfied with myself that I’m really going to keep enjoying it and I’m not so sure that after another 12 months that I’ll have the passion to keep enjoying it.

Is the passion fading then?
It’s not fading, it’s still there and I’m very mindful of the fact that every ball of every match you do is shown around the world so your performance level has to be as high as possible. I take great pride in what I do but I’m mindful of deteriorating. When you get into your mid-to-late fifties I just don’t think you can possibly be as good as you were in your late forties. The background knowledge and the experience that you gain is always there and that can sometimes carry you through but I never want to be a fly by the seat of my pants umpire.

How do you critique your performance? Do you get down on yourself when you make a wrong decision?
I don’t get down on myself but what I do hate, I suppose, is that when something goes wrong I know I could have done it better. That’s what concerns me, that two or three years down the track I won’t be able to do things as well as I am now. It’s a continuing self-analysis of performances. If I went through a bad slump in the next three to six months and something was going horribly wrong with my umpiring I wouldn’t want to continue because you would make a fool of yourself. As far as I’m concerned (if that did happen) it would only be a confidence thing. I’d maybe find it difficult to get confidence back up to a higher level if things were going wrong all the time.

How many wrong decisions are acceptable for an umpire to make?
I try to average it over a year when we will do ten to 12 matches and I wouldn’t like to be making more than one or two incorrect decisions in a Test match. When I say incorrect, they might turn out to be bad decisions on video review, but sometimes they are the only decisions you could make at the time even though I still don’t like that either. Some things are beyond your control that you have to let go, like a very faint nick on to pad for an lbw or a bat-pad catch where the fielder is within a couple of yards from the batsman and can hear the nick but I don’t. That’s not because I can’t hear, it’s because the state of the game sometimes means that you just miss it. It’s like missing a bowler’s no-ball and you think, ‘why didn’t I call that?’ Whether it’s a concentration lapse or whether your auto-pilot is not on, I don’t know. If there started being more than one or two (mistakes) in a match I’d start to be concerned, especially if it was the same type of decision. Any umpire who broods over a bad decision is not going to be at his best for the next one.

Are you concerned at the level of umpire intimidation in cricket now?
Players can appeal as much as they like and I never use that term ‘they’re trying to intimidate me’. The way I see it, they’re trying to get a decision to go their way. It might look like they’re continually trying to put pressure on but I don’t see it like that. Every appeal comes and goes and if it’s a ‘no’ that then doesn’t come into my thought process for the next appeal down the track.

What is your opinion on player behaviour, generally?
I think it’s pretty good. Probably ten years ago teams would make very frivolous appeals for quite a lot of things because that’s the way things were – they could get away with it – but now if a bowler makes an appeal for something that’s patently not out they often apologise on the way back, and I think they do that because they understand that there are a lot of professional umpires out there and they’re not going to get an outrageous decision go their way.

Someone like Shane Warne seems to favour ongoing discussion with umpires about decisions. Some would argue that is all part of a discreet ‘leaning on the umpire’ process. Where do you stand on banter with bowlers?
If they want to discuss a decision that didn’t go their way I would just say that it ‘didn’t have much going for it’ and they usually accept it. You don’t want to make them feel like you’re above answering their questions and once they know you are willing to communicate with them and also that you’re unwilling to get into long discussions they will hopefully leave you alone then to make future decisions. I respect everybody as professional cricketers because they have to work extremely hard to get where they are; any international cricketer doesn’t get an easy ride into a team. Bowlers’, who we talk to the most, have a particularly hard job.

Do you dislike some bowlers and does it affect your decision making?
There are some players that you probably don’t care for but that doesn’t affect any decision making as you have to keep your personal feelings away from the professional side of the game. Any umpire who has different feelings is going to be found out as everything is on show out there.

I know you are aware that coaches analyse umpires to see which ones are soft or are susceptible to accede to certain decisions. What do you think about this practice?
I won’t say I know any but I have go no doubts that there are coaches who advise players how to go about dealing with certain umpires and who do homework on umpires. I don’t think a coach would be doing his job if he wasn’t aware of an umpire’s propensity to give certain decisions whether it’s lbw, bat-pad or whatever. They do their research on the umpires quite well. Coaches log everything that happens out there and they do it to help their players

Obviously your history with Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan is well chronicled. What is the state of your current relationship?
I’ve umpired him in Test matches in the Caribbean, New Zealand, one-day matches in England, ICC tournaments – he gets on with his bowling and I get on with my umpiring. Obviously we’re not what you would call friends in any way but he’s pleasant; he greets me when he comes on to bowl and I try my best to do my job.

Would you no-ball him again (for throwing) as you did in 1995-96?
There’s a totally different system in place now in 2006 than what there was in 1995. You would like to think that progress in any industry would be enough to avoid problems before they occur. To everyone’s detriment there probably were not enough measures in place in 1995 to solve the issue.

Do you have any regrets about what happened back then?
I did what I believed was right in my mind; other people might have different views but I’m not going to dwell on what happened 11 years ago. There are more important things to think about.

Going back even further, you had a tough baptism in the early part of your career and I believe some decisions you made in a Test between Australia and South Arca at Adelaide created a permanent hatred towards you from South Africans? What really went on?
I was only a young umpire without much experience and I walked into a bit of lion’s den in that Test match. It wasn’t a good few days, that’s for sure. It was a tough Test match to umpire as they were really at each other; Australia had lost the Test in Sydney, unexpectedly from their point of view, and I went to Adelaide as both teams came out with all guns blazing. There was a lot of feeling in the match and a lot being said and maybe half a dozen of my decisions weren’t up to standard. The South Africans will say it was more than that. It was a lack of experience and I allowed myself to be distracted instead of focusing on what’s important. You can’t dwell on things and that game taught me a lot.

So the South Africans never forgot that match?
Two years later I went to umpire a match in South Africa and it was hard clawing back (respect), they obviously didn’t think much of me as an umpire. There was nothing I could do except go out there and umpire. Over a period of two or three years I think I proved it to them that I wasn’t as bad as they thought. You still always get a few lunatics in the South African press who love to hate me but so what? Big deal.

Does the security aspect concern you given the responsibility of your job?
Yes that was another reason why I thought I should retire after the World Cup. If you want to be an international umpire you can’t pick and choose where you go and you’ve got to go to places where you are out of your comfort zone and you don’t feel like you do when you are walking down to your local pub. I’ll be honest; there are times when I don’t like being put in a situation where you are arriving at grounds when there are a lot of people around. There’s a huge amount of money bet on cricket these days, nobody doubts that, and you wonder sometimes whether one of your decisions cost someone a lot of money. I’m certainly a lot more aware of my surroundings a lot more than I was a few years ago.

I remember in the Calcutta Test last year, when Pakistan were in India, and plastic bottles were thrown at you and Steve Bucknor after he gave Sachin Tendulkar out incorrectly.
That’s right and that was the only incorrect decision in the match out of about 150 appeals. You don’t like that sort of thing when people are that passionate about the game - sure they like to see their heroes perform well – but if something goes wrong it’s ‘blame the umpire’. It wasn’t just the reaction at the ground at the time that concerns me; it’s the possibility of someone who has money involved in it. I don’t want to be walking around with security guards with me every day while I’m away; you want to have some sort of relaxation when you’re not on the field.

How are you enjoying living in England (with your English wife Amanda)?
I’ve been living in Lincoln now for two and a half years and I love it. I love the icy conditions just before Christmas and having to scrape ice off the car window; I like the change of seasons. I lived in Sydney for about 30 years and although it gets cool in winter there you wouldn’t call it a big change. But in England I really like the three different changes in season; sometimes all in one day! I particularly enjoy the summer because it allows me to go to evening race meetings in the northern part of the country and going out for dinner with my wife, finding a nice pub on a Sunday afternoon to sit down and read the racing results.

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Interview with Ashes star Ashley Giles Recentaly

Last summer Ashley Giles was one of the heroes of England’s first Test series victory over Australia since 1987. England lost the first match heavily but bounced back to win 2-1 with Giles playing a crucial role. The Warwickshire spin bowler talks to ICONS about his love of cricket and explains why the sport is an English icon.

What inspired you to begin playing cricket?

I grew up playing cricket the old-fashioned way, on the village green, in Ripley, in Surrey, where my whole family was involved. Uncles, cousins, my brother – everyone played and Mum made the teas. For me that’s the purest form of the game and it’s still great to go back to watch games.

Did you have a cricketing idol?

Like most kids my age it was Ian Botham, an all rounder who had great character.

Did anyone have a big influence on you?

When I eventually stepped up to a higher standard there was a chap called Brian Ruby who was a coach at Guildford. He was like a cricket guru. He used to eff and blind at me but he was a superb coach.

What does playing cricket at the highest level mean to you?

Obviously I love the game but it’s the idea of playing and having fun with your mates and all the camaraderie that comes with it. Then there is the adrenaline buzz when you are facing a very quick bowler, or you take a very good catch, or bowl a great delivery. I am lucky that I have played a sport that I love. It’s a great profession to be in.

Can you describe how it feels to play for your country?

It gives me a huge amount of pride. It’s a one in a million chance to be able to pull on one of those shirts with the lions on the chest. I have achieved one of life’s dreams. To have played against the Australians and have beaten them makes it even more satisfying.

Why does cricket deserve to be an English icon?

Cricket might not quite be the gentleman’s game that it used to be but it still generates the sort of respect that other sports don’t have. Cricket is English through and through. The levels of sportsmanship are high – I think we saw that particularly last year in the Ashes series when the game was played hard but fair and afterwards we all met up for a beer.

What was your personal highlight of the Ashes victory?

On the last day at the Oval I batted for three hours with Kevin Pietersen. We had been in a position where we might lose [Giles made his highest Test score of 59]. Another highlight was taking the wicket of Ricky Ponting [Australia’s captain] at Edgbaston. He was scoring freely and I came on and got him out.

How did that compare with playing for England for the first time?

Much better! When I made my debut against South Africa, at Old Trafford, in 1998, I was a bag of nerves.

What are your ambitions?

I’d like to go to Australia and bring the Ashes home. Having beaten them here the ultimate challenge is to go and win in their own back yard.

Apart from cricket, can you give us your English icon?

I’d have to nominate the English countryside in summer. I live in Worcestershire and nothing beats being out walking in the countryside. When I am abroad touring one thing I look forward to is flying back over the green fields of England.

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Paul Collingwood interview and his success story

Your 135 against South Africa at Edgbaston in August came just in time to save your place. How aware were you of all the talk about your Test future?
The thing is you don’t need the press to tell you what the situation is. Usually, it’s all doom and gloom when you read the press and they make it seem a lot worse than it really is. But on this occasion I knew exactly the situation I was in [Collingwood had scored 43 runs in his previous six Test innings] and I knew pretty much 100 per cent that if I didn’t perform in that second innings, that was going to be it for a little while. So it was a tough situation to be in but I’ve been in it before and come through it. It was amazing how it turned around, really.

You’d had a bad decision in the first Test at Lord’s, out for 7 off a bat-pad-that-wasn’t. How did you react to that?
When you’re in bad form, you can start to think everything’s against you. I’d genuinely felt probably for the first time all summer that I could make a big score. I started off pretty well; Morne Morkel was throwing some short stuff at us and I took him on right from the word go. It was the first time I felt I’d got myself into a little bit of a system – I know I didn’t score many but it was disappointing. You don’t bear a grudge against the umpire: they just got it wrong on the day.

When your Test career is on 
the line, can you step back and say to yourself, ‘Well, I’m a professional cricketer, my life is actually pretty good’ and get things in perspective?
To be honest, cricket is my life. It’s very easy for people from the outside to turn round and say ‘You’ve got a great life.’ But how happy you are is down 
to how you’re doing on the cricket pitch. Family life is an important part of it but our lives are cricket and playing for England and there’s a lot of pressure involved in that.
When you’re in those situations you feel as though the whole world is on top of you. And the only way to get out of it is to actually score the runs. It’s amazing that it gets to the point where it’s so bad that you think you’ve got nothing to lose. It’s so frustrating. You know you’ve still got the ability and that your technique hasn’t changed much and you know it’s only the mental side. But the ultimate thing is that you get confidence back from getting runs in the middle.
The turning point? The decision to give up the one-day captaincy, which I made the night before, the Thursday. Mentally, that was a weight off my shoulders. I didn’t actually release that decision until the Saturday night when Vaughany decided to resign the Test captaincy after we’d lost. But that was a bit of a coincidence.
I’d rang my wife up on the Thursday: I hadn’t got any runs then I’d had a bad day in the field which was very unlike me. I always tend to do a job with the ball and catch my catches. But I’d dropped a couple of catches and got panned in my two overs and it was a real case of ‘This is as low as I can get’. And I remember speaking to the wife on Thursday night and saying, ‘Listen, it’s time to give the captaincy up, the last thing I want to do is lose my place in the Test squad.’
The other crucial factor was that it was last-chance saloon. And I’ve always had the character that I’d rather go down fighting and play in my natural manner. So if I was going to get out I was going to get out attacking. And it was amazing once I’d got into that frame of mind – switching 
from survival to taking the attack to the bowlers and trying to score runs.

So the one-day captaincy was a pressure for you, even during a Test series?
Of course. Captaincy doesn’t finish the day the one-day series finishes. There’s still issues behind the scenes, big decisions to make. The run out situation [against New Zealand at the Oval] was still playing on my mind. All these things mentally drain your energy.
I’ve always said that I need 100 per cent of my energy just to stay in the side and perform at the best of my ability. And the captaincy seemed to take too much energy away from my overall game.

Were you surprised at what a big deal the Grant Elliott run-out became?
I was a little surprised at some of the comments coming from parts of the press, especially people who’d played the game. Captains that I’d played under: 
I knew exactly what decision they’d have made.

You’re thinking of Nasser Hussain…
I’m not naming any names. But I was a little disappointed at the time. I thought: ‘I played under you. I know what you would have done.’ It hurt us a lot. That decision and the whole reaction to it took a lot of energy out of me: that was a gut-instinct decision, that was how I felt and after all the reaction I thought: ‘If that was my gut instinct and it was so bad then…’. You start getting doubts. Are you the right captain?
I looked into it afterwards. Steve Waugh had done it in 1999 in Barbados. Apparently, Brendon Julian pretty much rugby tacked Sherwin 
Campbell to the floor and then Waugh told him to eff off on the way out! So by those standards, I was quite happy with what I’d done. But Steve Waugh turned out to be a legend and a tough captain and I turned out to be… nothing.

Then you had the four-match ban for the slow over-rate. Did you feel that was harsh, that the captain should take such personal responsibility for that?
No, we know the situation. The rule’s there. As captain, you know the situation. I was on a level 2 warning from the game against India at Bristol last year. We were very slow. It happens 
in the really tight games. As captain you have to give yourself more time to make decision and get your field in exactly the right place.
That game at Bristol they scored 320-odd runs: we were fetching the ball back from the stands most for the time. That was my argument. And then this game at the Oval got so close; it took a long time to get everything right. And when I came off, having had the run-out situation, I obviously wasn’t in a position to defend everything that had gone on out there. It’s funny but I think everyone thought that the ban was for the run-out.

How do you look back on your year as England one-day captain now?
It was such a hard decision to give it up. I was enjoying parts of it. Leading the boys out on the pitch is something you’re always going to miss. And the win in Sri Lanka – especially without Freddie, who plays a massive part in the balance of the side. You think, ‘Not many teams could do that.’ I honestly think we were heading in the right direction, and making strides as a team. I mean – we still are, don’t get me wrong! So I’ve got fond memories of doing it. But there’s times like the run-out situation where you look back and you’re glad it’s gone.

Being back in the ranks is a weight off your shoulders…
Course it is. I’ve grown up from being a young lad with an ambition of wanting to play cricket for England. I never really, to be honest, had ambitions to captain. When the opportunity came along, I had to take it. You can’t miss opportunities like that: I had a place in both sides and I thought it was the right time.

One odd moment of your captaincy this year was the New Zealand tour: the team stormed the Twenty20s, then suddenly looked very meek in the ODIs. What happened?
New Zealand are a funny side to play against. They have match-winners who can blow you out of the park. And Brendon McCullum was going through a real hot streak. But you’re right. They didn’t have Vettori or Oram in the T20s. Our performances were 100 per cent, from planning to performance and we looked really strong. But they missed the likes of Vettori.
They’re a dangerous side; they’re not that high up in the rankings for nothing. They gave us a cricketing lesson in how to approach one-day cricket: when you’re on top of a team, you make sure you nail them. And they pretty much did that. They stick to their plans really well. And as a team we were still developing in that direction.

Overall, do you look back on 2008 as a good year or a bad year – or a slightly strange year?
I guess it’s been a disappointing year in the fact that I resigned as captain and I didn’t score as many runs as I would have wanted. But the positives - at the back end of that summer, it was massive. I truly believe that during the 60-odd I scored – and the 20 knocking the runs off in the second innings – in the last Test against South Africa I played better than in the hundred I made in the third Test. I truly believe those last two innings of the summer were the best I’ve ever played. So to get there from where I was takes me into a new chapter, I think. So, a disappointing year – but not disastrous.

And your county, Durham, became champions – though you must have felt semi-detached from all that?
Yeah: to be honest, I had very little to do with it. The games I played I didn’t contribute too many runs. But it’s a phenomenal achievement for such a young county. I’m just so pleased for Don Robson and Geoff Cook: they had a dream and a belief in what they could build so to get that ultimate prize and to do it so soon is a great achievement.


Paul Collingwood uses Slazenger bats and equipment

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The Lasith Malinga Success story

It’s too early to tell whether Lasith Malinga will go down in history as a fast-bowling great but his impact on Sri Lankan cricket in the few short years he’s been playing the game has been immense.

His captain Mahela Jayawardene says: “He’s a brilliant example for all young cricketers in Sri Lanka. Here’s a boy who came from an out-station with no cricket background and has reached the top. Batsman, bowler, it doesn’t matter where you are from, Lasith shows that if you’re good enough you’re going to make it.”

Make it he has. His unique sling-shot bowling action has brought him over 150 international wickets in just three years. He’s attracted attention the world over for his incredible, round-arm action, his whole-hearted performances and – of course – his irrepressible hair. Not since the heyday of Hanna-Barbera have our TV screens been so full of such follicular fabulousness. The hair changes for every series. Malinga doesn’t. He is still the same, small-town boy who just loves to bowl.

“I like to keep it simple – the bowling at least,” he smiles. Nor does he touch his leonine hair once, when our official catches up with him over dinner in Colombo. Twenty-four years ago, in a small fishing town called Rathgama on Sri Lanka’s south-west coast, Lasith Malinga was born. Eleven years later he started playing cricket on a beach facing the Indian Ocean. Seven years ago he held a leather ball for the first time. “It felt so heavy, so strange,” he says. “It was like something from another world.”

That was for a school match in Galle, his first ‘proper’ game ever. He took 14 wickets. Malinga broke through into the Sri Lankan side just three years later. Now, with his lethal 88mph yorkers emerging unreadably from somewhere in front of the umpire’s chest, he has become Sri Lanka’s pace-bowling spearhead. He has a Test strike-rate – 35 – that is considerably better than that both of colleagues like Chaminda Vaas and Muttiah Muralitharan and opponents like Brett Lee and Makhaya Ntini.

In 2007, against South Africa at the World Cup, Malinga became the first man in the history of international cricket to take four wickets in four balls. It could have been five. “I missed the fifth by nothing,” he says. “The ball just missed the stump.” And the edge of Charl Langeveldt’s bat, as Sri Lanka came within a whisker of pulling off an incredible victory. “

When the team needs something to happen, I get the ball,” says the man they call the Slinger. “I always think I can get a wicket at any time of a match. New ball, 
old ball, reverse-swing, ordinary swing: I can do it.” We’re eating at Colombo’s Cricket Club Café, in a restaurant where dishes are named after cricketing legends home and abroad. (No dish has been named after Malinga yet.) Malinga has always been someone to watch. He was a natural talent from the moment he ever bowled a ball. But talent in a one-road town a long way away from Colombo, which had absolutely no history of producing cricketers, didn’t have very far to go.

“I started playing on the beach,” he says. “I wasn’t far from my home; you could see it from my front porch. No-one in my family was involved with cricket, not even my older brother. My father was a mechanic and my mother worked at a bank.” Did you see any cricket when you were growing up? “No.” “What about local matches? “No.”

So how did you find out about cricket? “It was played on the beach by some grown-ups. I joined them when I was 11. Straight away, I could bowl fast. They liked to have me on the team.” Was it serious cricket? “Serious. But not like real cricket. Soft-ball cricket, with a tennis ball.”

What was your contact with real cricket? “I watched cricket on television, but 
the game played there was far away. They had hard balls, pads, helmets. We had bats cut out of bits of wood that we had picked up, and tennis-ball that we would shave and pichcchila,’ he searches for the English 
word, ‘…burn, to make them a bit harder. They went fast after you had burned them! The beach was all the cricket I played. My village would play other villages in six-a-side matches. We would play cricket 365 days of the year.” What if it rained? “We’d play”.

Giant leaves from coconut tree would be cut and placed over wooden frames to create a makeshift ‘indoor net’ and thus play was never interrupted. “School would finish at 1.30; by 2.30 we’d start playing until dark.” as a teenageR, Malinga started to build a reputation as a fast bowler around the coast from the world-renowned dive-centre Hikkaduwa to his home-town of Rathgama (pop. 6000). “I was playing six-a-side cricket and I knew I was good,” he says matter of factly.

Like many a Sri Lankan cricketer the only thing he feared was his mother, whose front porch was in viewing distance of the sands. “My mother was very strict and wanted me to not spend so much time playing cricket. What would happen is that I’d bowl an over and then go home, let my mother know I wasn’t just playing cricket and then go back to the beach and carry on playing!” (Don’t, by the way, tell his mother about his tattoos. Malinga doesn’t, until at least a week after he gets them.)

Malinga is unmissable on or off the cricket-field: there’s the straw-thatch hair, the simplicity and graciousness, and there is of course that scarecrow side-arm slinger of an action. I have to ask him the question, and he’s already answered it many times, if not in English. Why the side-arm sling? He answers patiently, and in his answer you can see that he was already thinking about his game. “In soft-ball cricket, to minimize the runs the safest ball is the yorker into the sand. So I want to bowl six balls of yorkers. This was always my action. I see this side-action as making it easy to bowl yorkers. No-one ever said to change it. I think with this action it is very easy to put the ball in the right place. If I bowl very straight I could take wickets.”

And then he grins. “I could always bowl quick – but not always straight.” His mother of course wanted him to study. Well followed as it was (imagine village-green cricket in England), cricket on the beach was never going to offer a living. And not even Lasith Malinga in his wildest dreams ever thought he could be a national cricketer.

A whizz at maths as a youngster, a career in a bank beckoned after A-Levels. But he never got a chance to take those exams. He got spotted first. “After O-Levels I went to Vidya Local College for A-Levels and I played a soft-ball match for them where the umpire was from Mahinda College [a cricket-playing school in Galle, a 20-30 minute drive from Rathgama] and he said I should play for them.”

Malinga’s mother let him go to this school with a strong academic reputation not knowing, that they had their own cricket field. He took 14 wickets that first time he ever bowled with a real cricket ball. He was on his way. He was a bowling star at Mahinda and was sent to Colombo in selection trials to take on the touring Under-19 Pakistan team. “Five of us went. I took three wickets in three overs. After the match the officials called me in to the pavilion. I thought that was it, I was going to play for Sri Lanka. But they sat me down and sent me home.” Current internationals, all-rounder Farveez Maharoof and opening bat Upul Tharanga, were in that year’s Sri Lankan U-19 team, but of the bowlers selected ahead of Malinga that day in August 2000 not too much has been heard since. “If I took three in three, better than anyone, and I’m not in the team then I think maybe I don’t have a future. No problem. I go home,” he shrugs.

There’s been a sing-song lilt to his voice; it’s slower and more measured now. It obviously still hurts. Malinga uses Sinhalese – and we use our translator – to make things absolutely clear. He was very disappointed to go back to Galle. He still doesn’t know why he didn’t get picked. Either it was his youth, his strangeness, his small-town-ness (no one from Galle made it at those national trials) or the fact he just wasn’t the right sort. He was what he was; he couldn’t change. “I was fast but still not accurate. Some balls yorker, some balls wide, some balls ‘head’. No one liked to face me and I did break one batsman’s finger.” The smile comes back now, but it’s not one of evil glee, more of pride and sheepishness. “Waqar Younis was my hero. I wanted to bowl like him.” I tell him Waqar at his peak also broke fingers and toes. “Waqar was a great bowler, I wanted my yorkers to be like his.”

Malinga doesn’t yet quite have the venom of Waqar but you only have to YouTube Malinga and Waqar to notice the uncanny similarities in action: both run through the crease, and put a tremendous amount of shoulder into their deliveries, almost throwing themselves off their feet. Waqar’s arm was never the highest, particularly after his 1992 back injury, but Malinga’s of course is pretty horizontal, a topspun forehand at point of release. Didn’t anybody ever try to change his action, make the arm higher? “They tried, I tried, but it just didn’t work. I was always better bowling like this.” He raises his arm to the side, as if signaling a no-ball. Another year of school cricket followed, terrorising Galle’s batsmen until former Sri Lankan fast bowler Champaka Ramanayake who was a player-coach at Galle Cricket Club took a punt on Malinga. When I spoke to Ramanayake in Kuala Lumpur last year, he said, “I spotted Malinga. Worked with him. Got him performing to his potential.”

In his first first-class match against Colombo CC, as an 18-year old Malinga took eight wickets. He was back on track. Rumesh Ratnayake was in charge of Sri Lanka’s pacemen at the time and tells me, “A lot of people claim credit for Lasith now but the thing is he did it all by himself. I just said to him that if he was stronger he would be more balanced and not bowl so many wides. He was quick. He just needed to be more reliable.” In the year he worked with Malinga before moving on to coach countries such as China for the Asian Cricket Council, Rumesh says “Lasith put on five kilos. He worked hard.” And he kept at it. “I was 52 kg when I started training in the national camp. Now I’m 72kg,” says Malinga. All muscle? “All muscle.”

With that muscle has come grace. At 5 ft 9, he’s not tall for a modern fast bowler, which makes his 85mph-plus stock deliveries all the more impressive. Plus, yorkers are effort-balls. “I’m happy to bowl six an over. I know that I can. But sometimes a knee-high full-toss works also. My strength is that I can put the ball where I want to.” He’s particularly dangerous with the older ball, and one feels that a wicket in his opening spell is actually a bonus. “Swing comes after 20 overs…”

He can get carted at the start of an innings, as we saw in the World Cup final and also in that famous match against South Africa earlier in the competition until he came back with four in four at the death and was a whisker away from bowling Sri Lanka to victory [see box, page 38]. That one performance in his 32nd ODI finally laid to rest any doubts that he was little more than an oddity. Suddenly finding he’s good enough to excel at the highest level, he wants to make sure he does nothing to compromise his standing. “Lasith’s handled his fame very well – especially all the female attention,” Sri Lanka skipper Mahela Jayawardene tells me. Does Malinga have a girlfriend? Of course. How many? “Just one,” Malinga says. And I’m inclined to believe him.

Tom Moody’s tenure as Sri Lanka coach from 2005/07 was significant for the way it re-focused the talents of Jayawardene, Sangakarra, Tharanga, Dilshan and Maharoof, players who were at risk into falling into comfort zones. The team achieved a level of consistency and class. What about Malinga? “Tom Moody had no effect on me,” Malinga says. None? “No. I knew what I had to do to stay in the team. Vaasy’s a great help on training. He’s had a long career and I can do the same.”

Malinga doesn’t even ride his motorbikes anymore, not wanting to risk injury. Yamaha are about to present him with a brand new motorbike, though, and his toothy grin has secured him a Sri Lankan toothpaste endorsement. He’s also taken on social and environmental concerns with a ‘Garments Without Guilt’ campaign for Brandix, Sri Lanka’s largest clothing exporter. Sure, the money’s coming in but he’s not doing or being anything other than himself. He’s been working on his own hair creations since he was 17, has been smiling for even longer than that and it didn’t need a tsunami to hit Rathgama to tell him that life can be washed away any second. He is who he is.

The last year has seen him climb the world rankings – he’s now ranked 9 in ODIs, though still lagging at 27 in Tests – and go further round the speed-dial: “I bowled 148 kilometres [92.5 mph] at Trent Bridge last year,” he says with pride. His best ball ever was “a yorker to bowl Dhoni in Jaipur” in February (even though it was a no-ball). He was a force in the Champions Trophy (11 wickets at 18.18) and also the World Cup (18 wickets at 15.77). Plus he’s proving to be a decent bat down the order. England have never found him easy in one-dayers and at times Australia’s batsmen have been under the cosh too. Yorkers aren’t dependent on the states of pitches or cloud cover for success. Waqar Younis in his yorker-laden pomp could have played anywhere and still taken wickets. Malinga’s the same. He is most dangerous with the ball showing a little wear, but able to get a wicket at any time.

He has captured hearts and minds around the world and unlike Jayasuriya or Muralitharan that’s not just down to his 
on-the-park cricketing magic. “I see people in grounds with my hair, either in wigs 
or real, not just at home. There were so many in the West Indies and South Africa! It’s really good to see.” His figures after three years in international cricket aren’t outstanding (he averages 24 in ODIs and 30 in Tests) but he is taking wickets (or at least the ones that Murali’s big hauls and Vaas’s swag allow him to) and he is a brilliant foil for the others. He’s not the only reason Sri Lanka are winning; their batsmen and bowlers have been enjoying a golden period in recent years. But it’s a happy team and Malinga is a major component of that. In reality, his career is only just starting. “I’m living my dream which I didn’t even know I could dream before.” Good as he is, he is going to get better.

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‘I’m a terrible Twenty20 player!’-K P interview

Are you expecting to get a hostile reaction when you walk out to bat in South Africa?
KP: I got a hostile reception when I walked out to bat in England yesterday [at an Edgbaston ground packed with India supporters] yesterday! It doesn’t faze me one bit. I don’t even think about it.

Will your knowledge of the local conditions an advantage?
Not really. International players travel round the world all the time now. They’ve all experienced the conditions. Besides, I’ve never played there in September. It’s a bizarre time to hold the tournament: it’s the start of their summer and the ball will move all over the place. Still, it’s the same for everyone. I love the country. It’s an awesome place.

England’s established players haven’t played much T20. Can you learn from the county specialists who have been drafted in?
They’ve more to learn from us. Playing international cricket is very different. There are completely different pressures. It’s much more intense.

How do you feel the format suits your game?
I’m a terrible Twenty20 player! I’ve not really taken to Twenty20; it’s not really my game. People think I’m suited to it because I’ll just go out and smash the ball straight away, but I’m at my best when I take 20 overs to build an innings. My best innings have all been like that. I prefer not to rush my game.

Looking at England’s ODI cricket, we’ve seen some real improvements since the World Cup, particularly with the fielding. What’s changed?
It was a long winter. I think maybe we were just out of energy. We were battered and battered by the Aussies and then battered by everyone else in the World Cup.
We knew things had to change. We knew we weren’t fulfilling our potential on a regular basis. We knew we had to be open and honest. We had to stop saying how good we are and start actually being good. We knew the fielding needed to improve. We needed regular runs from the batsmen and wickets from the opening bowlers.
Everyone has brought into it. Our performance in the field at Edgbaston was one of the best of any England team I’ve been involved in.
Colly has been chucked in the deep end as captain, but he’s doing really well. He’s fresh and he has a good approach. He’s similar to Vaughany in that he is very approachable and anyone can talk to him. I’m really conscious of helping ‘Colly’ out as much as I can. It’s a happy dressing room.

Colly seems to consult you a fair bit on the field…
I just try to help out as much as I can. I wouldn’t say I’m vice-captain or anything like that but Colly is heavily involved in the game, so he talks to me a lot and asks my opinions. Basically we just chuck a few things at each other like bowling changes and fielding positions. We read off a similar script.
We’re still a young team. The exciting thing is how much potential and talent the team has. We definitely went into the series against India as underdogs. They have three batsmen with 36,000 runs between them. None of us will get that amount in our whole careers between us. But I’ve said in a [team] meeting that if we fulfil our potential I don’t think anyone can beat us. We just need consistency to fulfil that potential.

How do you rate your own form?
It doesn’t matter how many runs I score: when we win I’m happy. I’ve scored so many runs for England in one-day cricket and we just keep losing and it’s just the worst thing ever. Personal performances don’t really bother me; they’re good for stats. But everyone wants to be in a winning dressing room. Anyway, I feel fine. I’ve scored quite a lot of runs this summer – close to 1,000 in all competitions. I take pride in my performances and want to be the best player I can be. But winning is the most important thing to me. If I get 0, 0, 0 and 0 but the side win, I’ll be the happiest bloke.

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shane warne interview on IPL Success

Shane Warne is not sure how he will feel during the Ashes next year. “I know there will be a stage in the series when Australia need to take 10 wickets on the final day, they’ve got 300 on the board, and England get a partnership going, and I’ll think, ‘Oh, I wish I had the ball in my hand now.” He then pauses before adding, “But then again I might also think, ‘Thank God I’m not playing.’”

At the moment it seems more likely he will resist a return to the Test arena. He won’t rule it out just yet. But it is nearly two years since the game’s greatest-ever bowler walked away from international cricket, and as he says, “My life is good these days.”
Warne, now 39, played his last Test in January 2007. His first-class retirement came this March and was something of a surprise to Hampshire who were expecting him to lead them for a fifth season. After 17 years devoted mainly to cricket, his active involvement in 2008 was limited to a triumphant six weeks’ in charge of Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League. But he says he is busier and earning more money than ever, playing poker across the world, satisfying a growing portfolio of sponsors, directing his charitable foundation, building a new house, and above all, devoting time to his son and two daughters.

Our official meets Warne, wearing a smart suit and tie, in the basement of a members club in the centre of London. This morning he had launched his new book appraising the 100 best cricketers he had played with or against amid the opulent surrounding of the Australian High Commission before moving on to sign over 500 copies of it at a nearby book shop.
Now, as he tucks in to two large bowls 
of chips smothered in ketchup, it’s 
obvious that Warne’s aura, even in retirement, remains undiminished, and across a restaurant table he proves to be candid and generous company.

How is retirement treating you?
It is wonderful. I feel like I have a lot more freedom. I dictate my life, I pick and choose what I do. Cricket used to be in control, 
but now I am. I’m looking at what fingers 
I can put in to all these little pies. I am 
even looking in to buying a tennis centre 
in Melbourne. But mainly it is about 
being with my kids.

How much time do you spend with them?
They spend nine days with their mum and then five days with me. I do everything; I get up with them, make breakfast, make school lunches, tidy the house, pick them up from school, take them swimming, diving, dancing, and soccer for Jackson. 
I make dinner, help with their homework, read stories and put them to bed. Me splitting up with their mum was a tough thing to go through, so it’s great they now have a routine.

So you do all the household chores as well?
I tried a couple of cleaners, but they didn’t do a very good job, so now I do it all myself, absolutely everything. During the day I clean the house, do the vacuuming and the ironing. I’m pretty good at it too.

How is your fitness holding up without full-time cricket?
My fitness is great. I’m about 88 kilos at the moment. I feel strong and I am probably fitter than when I actually played cricket.

Would you say your life is a lot calmer now?
I’m in a good space at the moment. Life is good. I wouldn’t say it is the happiest I have ever been, that is another thing, but I’m happy. My life is busier than ever. Now I have the time for things I didn’t as a cricketer and the truth is I’m earning more money now than when I was playing. 

When you were playing, you used to say you felt like you were living inside a soap opera. Is that still the case?
Well, the soap might still be going, but the spotlight isn’t as intense as it used to be, people don’t seem as judgmental.

As a sportsman, is it difficult to grow up, and so ultimately you catch up once you’ve finished playing?
I don’t know about that, but it is true that for 14 years I lived in a little bubble, and in there all that mattered was my form, my team-mates and the game we were playing. You just focused on those few things, and nothing else. So when you retire you have so much more to enjoy in life.

Do you feel you know yourself better now?
I have always understood myself well, I know who I am. I am a good person, I am comfortable with who I am. I am the same person I was 20 years ago.
You once said “There’s a big kid inside me.” Is he still there?
Yes, I am still just a big kid. That’s why I get along so well with my kids. As much as I am their father and a role model, I don’t feel like I’ve grown up, I’m still a kid at heart. I play with them all the time, and love it, whether it’s Lego, kicking a ball about, playing tennis or riding bikes around the streets. That excites me now.

Have you ever doubted your decision to retire from cricket?
Not for a second. I left the game at the right time and have moved on, so I can enjoy other things in my life.

I do miss the competitiveness of playing, bat versus the ball, you versus the batsman. That is very hard to replace. In many ways that is the role poker plays in my life now because it is also a very competitive world, which gives me that injection of excitement. But, of course, it isn’t the same as playing in front of 70,000 at the MCG, and ripping one past the bat and knocking his pegs over. I don’t think anything will ever replace that feeling.

Do you watch much cricket these days?

I honestly couldn’t even tell you when the next Test starts. If I’m not doing anything I might turn the television on, and think, ‘Oh, look, the cricket is on.’ But I don’t keep a close eye on the game now, other than to look out for my good mate Michael Clarke. There is no way I would set aside a day to watch the cricket on television.

How did you enjoy the first season of the Indian Premier League?
In 20 years of first-class cricket I have never experienced such intensity and passion. The only thing that came close was the Ashes in 2005. Mate, it is so hard to accurately explain what it was like. I mean we had 20,000 people with their faces painted in the colours of the Rajasthan Royals outside the ground on the day of the final. They banged on our bus when we arrived at the ground, ‘Go the Royals’, they were so in to it.
The beauty of the IPL was I was bowling to Ganguly in Rajasthan and they were all supporting me, and went berserk when I knocked him over. Nothing compares to it.

Did it show what you could have done as Australian captain?
I don’t sit around wishing I had been captain of Australia. I had my opportunities as vice-captain, I captained the one-day side in quite a few games, and that’s that.

Do you like the title as the best captain Australia never had?
Yeah, I suppose that is flattering. It is better than people thinking I was shit. Captaining Hampshire seemed to go pretty well: we won more Championship games in the four years I was in charge than any other county. We won a trophy and got to a final. I was captain in the IPL, and we won it and people liked the way we played, so I reckon my captaincy style is pretty good.

What was your approach as the Rajasthan Royals’ captain and coach?
Express yourself and be laidback. That’s it. It was only me and a couple of assistants. We didn’t have any computers. I made it as simple as possible. It was old school, mate. We sat around the pool with a beer or a Coke and just talked about cricket. There were no big warm-ups, we swam in the pool, jumped on the bus, tossed a coin and said, ‘We’re batting.’ We didn’t arrive at the ground a couple of hours before the game, or any of that rubbish.

Is there any chance of a Test comeback?
I could not say 100 pr cent I will never play for Australia again. I never say never in my life. I could not say I won’t come back. Who knows what will happen down the track? At the moment, in my head, I have no plans whatsoever of playing cricket for Australia again. If something happens in the future, I will weigh it up at the time.

What if you got a call from Ricky Ponting before the Ashes asking if you could help out for the series?
I would take the call and listen to what he had to say. I could say, ‘No thanks, I’m flattered, but I’m not interested,’ or do you know what? I could actually say, ‘Yeah, let’s give it a go!’

So you are prepared to come back?
Look, the problem is there are a lot of other things a decision like that affects. First and foremost, there are my kids, I would miss my five days with them. I would have to speak to their Mum and tell her, ‘I am going to do this for the next two months.’ I have my sponsors, poker commitments, charity stuff, my foundation… it is a pretty big decision. I am happy with what I’m doing and don’t want to return.
But that scriptwriter of yours you often referred to might be preparing one more final dramatic chapter?
That scriptwriter did a good job for me; he looked after me for most of my career. There might be another chapter, I just don’t know.

Have Australia managed to properly replace you yet?
I’m not sure they have replaced me, but that is a little unfair on the spinners who are coming through. It is like, ‘Is anyone going to replace Glenn McGrath?’ or, ‘Is anyone going to replace Wasim Akram?’ Sometimes it is hard to replace guys who have succeeded at international level. Hopefully they will come up with an unbelievable spinner that starts to take heaps of wickets, so people will stop asking me if I am going to come back.

In your opinion, who is Australia’s best spinner at the moment?
Bryce McGain, and it is just a shame he had to go home from India. He is a wonderful bowler. He might be 36, but he’s not played that many first-class games, just club cricket for the last 10 years, so he’s not suffered the wear and tear. Bryce could play Test cricket for the next few years. He has improved unbelievably.

Could Jason Krejza be the answer to the side’s spinning problem?
I honestly couldn’t tell you. I have never seen him bowl.

How good is Australia’s stable of spinners?
There are a few guys at the moment, including Beau Casson, Cameron White, Dan Cullen and Cullen Bailey. Then there is Xavier Doherty, Aaron Heal, and a young kid from New South Wales called Steve Smith. They could all be okay, but it just depends on how they progress over the next couple of years.
Ian Chappell has said Australia have not been this vulnerable in the last 12 years: Would you agree?
I would never go against Ian Chappell, he’s been the biggest influence on my career, and he’s generally spot-on in everything he says. What I would say is Australia doesn’t lack the ability: the talent is as good as it has ever been, it is just that they don’t have enough experience yet.

How would you assess this Australian side?
Well, there is obviously no proven spinner, who can help take four or five wickets on the last day to win a game. That is an area of concern, but for the rest of the bowlers, Stuart Clark is doing exceptionally well, Brett Lee has just had the best year of his life, and there is Mitchell Johnson, who has yet to find his feet, but he is left arm and bowls 150k. So there is variety in the attack. The batting could be as strong as ever: Hayden with Katich or Jaques as openers, then Ponting, Hussey, Clarke, Watson, Haddin at seven, and if they play Cameron White, he’s at eight, wow!

Who will be Australia’s emerging stars over the next year?
There’s [Victoria seamer] Peter Siddle, who could be really good. But more than anyone it will be Shane Watson: international cricket hasn’t seen the best of him yet. He’s played three or four Tests so far, but once you see him really get in to his stride he can be as good as Andrew Flintoff. For a start, he’s a better batsman than Flintoff: Watson could bat at three or four, and while he’s not as good a bowler as Freddie, as a package he could really challenge him as the world’s best all-rounder.

Could England regain the Ashes in 2009?
If England keep losing Test series leading up to the Ashes then I think Australia will wipe the floor with them. But if England start to find some momentum, start winning Tests and gelling together then it could be a hell of a contest. England have won one Test under Kevin Pietersen, so they have a lot to do in the next year.

Have the English press gone overboard about the start of the Kevin Pietersen’s era?
I did a press conference this morning in front of some English journalists, and when I said all he had done so far was win one dead rubber, they thought I was sledging them. I couldn’t believe they were getting upset! I thought I must be missing something. I was just stating the facts. With Kevin as captain England has won one dead rubber and played well in the one-day series against South Africa. That’s all. I would be encouraged, but I wouldn’t be getting my hopes up too high.

Will Kevin Pietersen prove to be a successful England captain?
Yeah, he will be a good captain. He will get people to follow him as a good leader, he loves the game, and he will do a good job.

But the captaincy has famously affected other great English players like Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff…
But Pietersen isn’t English, is he? [Laughs] He is hungry, mate, he just wants to be the best he can possibly be, and he will do that.

What have you made of Monty Panesar’s recent progress?
I’ve said before he might have played 33 Tests, but that’s not right, he has actually played one Test 33 times. He bowls the same way all the time, he just waits for the batsman to get himself out. I like Monty: he has a lot to work with, I love his enthusiasm, the way he really spins it.
Monty has a real good chance. I just think he hasn’t really grasped spin bowling yet. I’m not sure he has spoken to enough of the right people, or that the people who 
are speaking to him understand spin bowling enough either.

Who are England’s most important players?
As well as Pietersen, it is Flintoff and Harmison, and Michael Vaughan too, who England need to be part of their Ashes side. Without those guys, England won’t be strong enough.

Where else do England need to improve before the Ashes?
Their bowling needs to be more consistent. Other blokes need to step forward, because they can’t just throw the ball to Freddie or Harmy all the time. England’s top order needs to make more runs, so to give the middle order, the stroke players like Pietersen the chance to come in and knock it around. Flintoff also needs to go in when the ball is a bit older, and be able to slog it around.

How about the wicketkeepers?
Matt Prior is no good, I don’t rate him at all. He couldn’t catch a cold, mate. He is a dangerous batsman in one-day cricket, so he can sort of get away with it. Tim Ambrose is a very good keeper, but they probably need him to make a few more runs. If I was bowling I would feel confident with Ambrose, but if I was bowling with Prior behind the stumps, I would think, ‘Oh no.’ I would be urging the batsman: ‘Hit it to a fielder, please don’t run past and miss one’. England are obviously prepared for him to drop a few catches.

What are England’s other weaknesses?
They have too many people who are inconsistent, and don’t perform enough. I still have a question mark over Ian Bell, and there is also still a question mark over Paul Collingwood as a Test batsman.

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