Where were you when Muttiah Muralitharan, after hours of agonizing Indian stonewalling and equally nerve-shredding Lasith Malinga fireworks, made history by taking his last, 800th Test victim? I know where I was: on the couch, having clung fearfully there for three hours while my brother sat disembowelling unfortunate umpire Daryl Harper for a marginal lbw mistake. (He swears, though our 9-year-old cousin denies it, that the young ‘un’s finger was firmly embedded in his nose when the historic incident took place. Whatever.)
What a career it’s been though, and what an entertainer. Forget the numbers, staggering though they are; Murali wasn’t a numbers fellow, though each of his 800 astutely scrounged-out scalps inched Sri Lanka closer towards becoming a fine Test nation. He was a performer, plain as that; for all the wonder, controversy and batting shambles his amazing, wrist-spun off-breaks indulged in, it was, tellingly, his madcap, stand-on-one-foot-shut-your-eyes-and-duck-while-swinging-for-your-life tailend slogging, which somehow fetched a Test fifty against Australia and even won a couple of one-dayers, that brought the most unfettered glee. It was quite endearingly agricultural.
His bowling, hampered by repeated outbursts of chucking (ie cheating), furious and occasionally tabloid-level attack from several quarters (including, bewilderingly, that of then-Australian PM John Howard), patiently conducted Tests, repeated explanations of a naturally bent arm, eventually reached an Everest (or K2). Whether or not you agree with Murali, an off-spinner who somehow wove his webs through robust wristwork, it’s hard to deny the character with which he brushed off repeated accusations and allegations, even when cleared by the officials, always with a pair of unnerving, ogling eyes, a friendly chuckle and a Cheshire-cat grin.
He couldn’t, said he, please everybody, but he pleased most, and this epitaph shan’t waste its space dealing with his stubborn detractors. Staggeringly, he took 67 five-fers, 22-match-ten-fers, and to allege that he was a minnow-strangler is plain foolishness, because he did it against every opposition in just about every set of conditions.
It was excruciating, waiting for that 800th, while about half of Sri Lanka sat packed under the Galle fort tower waiting for their most-loved countryman to get his 800th. It wasn’t, he’ll tell you, much more than a number, and yet it was very, very satisfying that this goggling, glaring, howling, grinning jester of a strangler reached it.
