by Arunabha Sengupta
When he was in full flow, every movement at the crease was stamped with an abundance of oozing class. The drive through cover, with sublime timing and uncanny placement, was a joy to the eye and ear. The flick played with a whip of the wrists past midwicket spoke of languid grace. The cuts behind the wicket, played at the last possible moment, when the ball was well past the bat by all mortal reasoning, could be only described as delectable.
From the late 1990s to very recent past Mahela Jayawardene, along with his close friend Kumar Sangakkara, lent the finishing touches to the craft of the Lankan willow. They combined indigenous talent of the island seen in Sathasivam, Mendis, Dias, de Sliva and Jayasuriya with the blueprint of international class.
The two were the enormous pillars on which Sri Lankan cricket stood for years and reached for the stars, often the traces of celestial achievement scripted by the fingers and wrists of Muttiah Muralitharan.
Jayawardene was the calm counterpart to Sangakkara’s exuberance, providing right-handed composure to his friend’s southpaw flamboyance. The contribution of these two men in the modern history of Sri Lanka – cricketing and otherwise – is beyond measure.
As civil war continued to rage in the background till very recently, people of the country lived in strife and struggle with scary shots of gunfire reverberating in the background. The slightest splash of smile and a promise of brighter days were delivered again and again by the success of the national cricket team, much of it built around the willows of these two maestros.
Jayawardene himself grew up amidst turmoil and explosions in Colombo. “I have two, three school friends who caught a couple of bombs. I have a friend who still has shrapnel inside his body. He has to carry a certificate whenever he travels, going through machines and all that.” He lived through the disturbing sights and noxious fumes of charred bodies. And all the while he kept playing cricket, acknowledged from earliest days as a special talent.
The terror and atrocities around him could not shroud his dreams. Something else almost did. Dhishal, his brother, was afflicted with brain tumour and died as a teenager. The tragedy led a devastated Jayawardene to turn his back to the game for long. When he returned to the crease, his initial spate of cricketing success was instrumental in paying off the medical debts piled on the family during the futile treatment of his brother.
Emerging from the depths of despair and tragedy Jayawardene perhaps learnt to deny impossibility. He refused to read even the starkest of writings on the wall. He did not seem to believe in the unassailability of what appeared to be fate to other eyes. His bat battled against certainties and often come out triumphant.
In his very fourth Test, he scored 167 on a treacherous Galle minefield against New Zealand. And as he matured over the years, these inconceivable batting feats became more and more frequent. He hung on over six hours for 119, saving the 2006 Test at Lord’s.
In the same year, Jayawardene took record books through baffling revisions and reprints, scoring 374 and adding a mind-boggling 624 with Sangakkara at Colombo against the Proteans. For good measure, he scored 123 in the very next Test to bring off a nail-biting one wicket victory while chasing down 352.
Under his energetic, and sometimes creative, captaincy, Sri Lanka too conquered new frontiers, winning Test matches in England and New Zealand for the first time in their cricketing history. As captain Jayawardene scored his 3665 runs at 59.11 in Test cricket opposed to his overall 11814 at 49.84
It was also under his leadership that the team survived through their greatest peril — this time off the field. At Lahore, on the third day of the Test match in 2009, the team bus was attacked by terrorists. Shots rang out in the air landing all over the vehicle, shrapnel flew around striking terrified players, a grenade rolled under the bus, and an RPG flew over the bus. Six Pakistani policemen, along with two civilians, were killed in the attack. Seven Sri Lankan cricketers, including Jayawardene and Sangakkara, suffered injuries. The team survived the incident — not entirely unscathed, visibly shaken. As the driver heroically drove them to safety, Jayawardene called the Sri Lankan president on his cell phone, and asked him to get his team out of Pakistan and to the safety back home.
However, the man who did not know how to throw in the towel and looks impossibility unflinchingly in the eye finally got tired of battling the various dimensions of politics in Sri Lankan cricket administration and resigned for the second time in 2012 — making way for Angelo Matthews.
As a batsman, Jayawardene’s technique was pure, touched with heavy dollops of elegance, the stroke-making smooth and serene. Untouched by time and blessed with the economy of style, he could bat on and on. Thus the colossal scores have been piled up — with various stints at the wicket amounting to 374, 275, 242, 240, 237 and 213 not out
Even when he batted in the shorter formats, hardly ever is a brutal stroke executed. The 2011 World Cup final against India was the defining example of impeccable cricketing shots, not one of the hits suggesting violence. Yet, gaps were found in the most meticulously set fields — every boundary a statement in class. Even when he struck a trademark Zaheer Khan in-swinging yorker over mid-off to bring up his hundred, it was just an extension of the coaching manual, not its savage
For a batsman of his class and temperament, Jayawardene’s overseas records (average of 39) remained a mystery, leading to a lot of scepticism regarding his claims to genuine greatness.
However, he will be remembered for his composed elegance at the wicket as one of the top two batsmen in the history of Sri Lankan cricket — by fans and figures alike. As the face of calmness, unruffled against the most monumental odds, waging successful battles against impossibility. As one of the few good men who ignited brief flashes of happiness streaking through the psyche of a perennially troubled nation.
Mahela Jayawardene was born on 27 May 1977.