The Legend of Pradeep Mathew Read Online Free PDF Page A

isn’t.
    ‘Aye, bonnie lad,’ says Jonny. ‘And I’m also the bastard who’s gonna take home ya bottles!’
    The bet is not on who will win. In 1985, there is only one answer to that. The team that isn’t Sri Lanka.
    ‘Absholutely shuperb delivery.’
    We stop our chatter and gawk at the TV. Is Richie Benaud saying something nice about Sri Lanka?
    ‘P.S. Mathew’s figures are not flattering. 7 overs. None for 51. But thish over hash been as good as I’ve sheen from a left-arm chinaman bowler.’
    I will no longer reproduce the quirks of Benaud’s speech. I wouldn’t want to offend the great all-rounder. Ari, on the other hand, has no such qualms.
    ‘This pious bugger gets on my nerves.’
    On the giant TV in this air-conditioned room, Sri Lanka is suffering its seventh successive thrashing of the year. We will go on to be soundly beaten five times by Border’s Australians and five times by Lloyd’s West Indies. But never more soundly than the match that day.
    The TV is the size of half a cinema. When Jonny got promoted from press officer, he insisted on a cinema room, pointing out at high-flown meetings, in hifalutin tones, that screenings of French new wave and German expressionist films at the Alliance Française and the Goethe Institute were popular with middle-class Sri Lankans.
    A sports fan like us, Jonny rigged the screen to the MI6 satellite and got live feeds of cricket, football, rugby and tennis. Taking advantage of unspent budgets and absent high commissioners, he equipped the room with soundproofing, a well-stocked bar and plush sofas.
    Jonny always invited me and Ari over to the High Commission to watch live games and let us booze and shout abuse at the large screen.
    And in 1985, Ari and I do both in abundance. We also play silly games. Like the Seamless Paki, a contest of who could construct the longest sequence of overlapping Pakistani cricketers’ names. At the time of writing, Ari is reigning champ for ‘Saqlain Mushtaq Mohammad Wasim Akram Raza’.
    Today’s bet has to do with our favourite commentator, Graham Snow. The only one who has nice things to say about Sri Lanka.
    ‘I’m with ya, Aree mate. Benaud’s a tosser,’ says Jonny. Jonny’s accent is a mixture of Geordie and Punjabi, two very similar dialects spoken by two very dissimilar people. On screen, with Australia 262–1 off 37 overs, Richie Benaud does not respond.
    Black and white photographs adorn the lime walls. Lord Mountbatten, Sir Oliver Goonatileke, Queen Elizabeth, Sir Richard Attenborough, the current High Commissioner. The air conditioner is set to just right.
    ‘I say wicket this over,’ says Ari. ‘Loser serves drinks.’
    The Island editor had insisted I hand in my match report by midnight. I make a mental note to depart early. And then Mathew bowls a perfect googly.
    Anticipating the off break, Dean Jones dances down the pitch, his sunglasses glinting. The ball pitches on middle and leg and cuts sharply into the gloves of keeper Amal Silva, who whips off the bails. Jones out for 99.
    ‘What did I tell you?’ squeals Ari. ‘OK. Jonny, for calling the great Richie a tosser. Gin for me, arrack for Wije and make yourself something nice.’
    Ari turns his thinning head of hair towards me. ‘I say, who is this fellow?’
    ‘Pradeep Mathew. Our latest partner for DS.’
    The veteran leg spinner D.S. de Silva was in his forties when Sri Lanka gained test status. The 1985 series was his swansong. It would be ten years before Sri Lanka had a regular wicket-taking spinner in the side. In the decade in between, we experimented with seventeen different ones.
    When Mathew removes Allan Border’s leg stump with what can only be described as a slow, reverse-swinging yorker, the three of us scream. The ball, curling in the air from off to leg and snaking under Border’s bat, causes Richie Benaud to launch into uncharacteristic hyperbole.
    ‘That’sh one of the mosht amazing deliveries I’ve sheen.’
    Inside the