952 for 6!
Prem Panicker
Sport at its best produces triumph and disaster; moments of superhuman achievement and moments of incredible fraility.
We meticulously enter them in the record books - the pluses and minuses, the wins and the losses, all entered in the ledger of international cricket.
But the most sublime of sporting moments are the ones that never make it into that ledger.
Ledgers are like that - you have a column in your account book to enter the price of a cola. But no column to enter the sensuousness, the sheer physicality, of chilled liquid trickling down a parched throat on the hottest day of summer.
The fifth day of the first Test between India and Sri Lanka produced one of those magic moments that you pack away in lavender and keep tucked away in a corner of your mind, to warm yourself with when life turns arctic.
Sanath Jayasuriya batting 340. Around him, the brassy sounds of the baila reverberating from the packed stands (the Sri Lankan government and the cricket board had decided, in anticipation of the dethroning of Brian Lara, to throw open the gates to all comers).
Rajesh Chauhan turns one sharply from leg to off, the left hander pushes at it, the ball balloons gently into the hands of Saurav Ganguly at silly point, the fielder takes the catch and throws it up, the bowler and keeper get together to slap some skin...
The camera pans towards Sanath Jayasuriya as he begins the long walk back. On his normally impassive face is etched the agony of disappointment. One stride, two... and the tears break out... a gloved hand rises to his eyes to dash them away... and then the batsman rehearses the stroke that got him out, trying to undo that one moment of fraility that ended 13 hours of superhuman achievement...
The tears continue to trickle...
An instant later, Saurav Ganguly is up there beside him, patting him on the back... Sachin Tendulkar races up from second slip.. Azhar from first slip comes up to put his arm around Jayasuriya's shoulder and walk a few paces with him, murmuring consolingly... Sidhu runs all the way over from sweeper cover... and within a minute, Jayasuriya is surrounded by the entire Indian team... all consoling him for having missed out on a chance to better Brian Lara's record for the highest individual score in Test cricket...
A superman in tears that he hadn't stretched the envelope of achievement a shade further... 11 sportsmen, recognising the pain of a peer, reaching out to him in sympathy...
Magic!
And somehow, after this, the rest of the day's play became irrelevant.
A colleague, watching with me, commented that Ganguly should have fumbled the catch, allowed Jayasuriya the 36 more runs he needed to go ahead of Brian Lara's record.
Frankly, I am glad the fielder held on to it. A batsman who climbs the pinnacle does not need the niggling thought that his achievement is a gift. Because had Ganguly deliberately fumbled the easy chance, had Jayasuriya gone on to 376 or more, every mention of it would include the addendum, 'But of course, Ganguly sportingly dropped a catch and let him get there' - and that devalues the achievement. Today, Sanath Jayasuriya can content himself with the realisation that if he is the third highest scorer of all time, then he owes that position to no one but himself. And that is how it should be.
In the emotionalism of a sporting moment that, to my mind, ranks with the classic Wimbledon confrontation between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe where the latter found himself on the losing end but ended up being the real hero of the day, we need to pay tribute to a more positive moment. That instant in time when the magic figure of 905 went up on the scoreboard - the highest ever total recorded by one side in the 1374 official Tests played thus far.
Again, the excuses are predictable: the wicket was flat; the bowling toothless; the Indian side was not trying... &c.
None of that is valid. The wicket was not lifeless. As for that stuff about 'ah well, the bowling had nothing in it, just club class', try a test. Get the smallest boy you can find to toss you donkey drops. And try playing it for say two hours without making a mistake, giving your wicket away. You'll find that no matter the quality of the bowling, going on and on and on is not as easy as it is being made out to be.
So hey, let's quit with the excuses and rise to applaud a magnificient effort by a team that has, in the course of five days, sloughed off the reputation of the happy campers of Test cricket, and revealed an unsuspected core of steel.
Ruthlessness of the kind Sri Lanka revealed on day five is rare even in an era where ruthlessness is a sporting sine qua non. Once Jayasuriya got out, the temptation would have been for the remaining batsmen to just go out there and fling their bats around. But no - they just fixed their collective vision on yet another goal, and did what they needed to do to get there. Ranatunga and Aravinda D'Silva hammered the bowling, true - but it was calculated savagery, not mindless mayhem. They took few if any risks, and even the few they took were calculated with precision and pulled off with panache.
The result? A 59 year old record fell. Sri Lanka dethroned the England side of 1938 as the team to have recorded the highest total in Test history - and, in the process, pushed the envelope of achievement that much further.
So what does this mean for Sri Lanka? After a decade and more in the wilderness, the island nation burst into the big time when they added determination to their natural flair and winning the 1996 World Cup.
But what was more impressive was that even as they began their 1996 Cup campaign, Sri Lanka announced that their next goal was already fixed - best Test playing nation status by the year 2000.
Over these last five days, they took the first step towards that goal - and what a step it has been! A side known for meteoric batsmanship discovers within itself the patience, the strength of character that are, at the Test level, assets more prized than blundgeoning strokeplay.
Like Donovan Bailey finishing up top in the Boston Marathon.
They say the longest journey begins with just a single step. Sri Lanka today took that step. And something about this display gives the spectator the feeling that it won't be long before the steps turn into a trot, then to a gallop towards the goal they have set themselves.
Think, too, of the long term effect of this performance. Every country needs a hero. Sri Lanka has 11. Throughout the country, thousands of young kids will be out there, bat in hand, pretending to be Jayasuriya, Mahanama, Aravinda...
In that sense, the Lankan performance in this Test is like a fixed deposit in a bank - something that, years from now, returns to you, multiplied manifold.
Meanwhile, what of India?
I suspect I'll draw flak for this, but I am glad that the side found itself so thoroughly, devastatingly humiliated. India has been cavalier about its cricket for far too long, and the wake up call has, to my mind, come at just the right time.
Time and time again, commentators and analysts have argued that the team has to discover within itself a heart, a spirit, a determination to do its damndest, come what may.
Sitting back and saying there is nothing in the wicket is not the kind of attitude that gets you places. To just turn the argument on its head - if there really was nothing in the wicket, if the Indian skipper and his side were aware of that when they won the toss and went in to bat, why then didn't they do what the Sri Lankans did - viz, mount a calculated assault on the batting records?
I remember once getting one of those 'inspirational' cards, that read: When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.
It could as easily have read: When you find yourself on a batting track, set records.
The simple truth is that India went in with a negative, 'nothing to this Test' attitude - and at the end of five days, has paid for it dearly. It has, in the process, suffered a most devastating blow to its collective morale. Four more times this year, the Indian team will go up against Sri Lanka - in fact, the next confrontation begins this very Saturday. And each time, the spectre of today's scoreboard will loom large in the collective mind of the Indian team.
It is for this reason that I am looking forward to the second Test, which begins this Saturday at the Sinhalese Sports Club. The team today touched a nadir - the question is, will it, at least now, discover true grit? An ability to make the best of available conditions, rather than moan for what it does not have?
Will the team realise, at last, that excuses have no place in the record books - only performance does?
The answer to that lies in the future.
For now, though, let's luxuriate in the sense of awe and wonder that the Sri Lankan scoreboard induces. For such moments only come once in a lifetime - if you are lucky.
Scoreboard
A page from the past
Records at a glance
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