The lock-down has given us an opportunity to listen to current international stars who are interviewing their counterparts and as a result the public are now aware as to what takes place behind the scenes.
Former Test captain Kumar Sangakkara, who joined ThePapare’s interaction during lock-down last month has been highly sought after and during one of these chats he revealed how it was Marvan Atapattu who said enough is enough after the South Africans subjected his teammates to a barrage of abuse.
On that tour to South Africa in 2002, Marvan was Sanath Jayasuriya’s deputy and it was he who convinced the team that Sri Lanka needed to give the Proteas a taste of their own medicine.
Read – From a nightmare to a batting sensation: starring Marvan Samson Atapattu
What followed was an acrimonious series with the South Africans being subjected to a barrage of verbal abuse and vice-versa. Marvan was never seen to be overstepping the line but there were others like Sangakkara behind the stumps and Russel Arnold at short leg doing the job for the team.
Marvan’s elegant cover drives are a treat to watch and so is the way he conducts himself both on and off the field – a gentleman and a role model.
The Aussies were in town in 2004 and Sri Lanka had been soundly beaten in the Tests in what was Shane Warne’s return series after the drug ban. The ODIs were closely contested and the Dambulla game went to the wire.
Australia needed 56 runs in 56 balls with Andrew Symonds and Adam Gilchrist out in the middle and world’s best finisher Michael Bevan to follow. The Sri Lankans were fighting tooth and nail to make a breakthrough. Symonds pulled a Kumar Dharmasena delivery onto his pads and when the bowler and wicketkeeper appealed, umpire Peter Manuel gave him out. A shocked Symonds was storming off the ground and Gilchrist, the non-striker expressed his displeasure as well.
The Sri Lankans were celebrating but the captain (Marvan) knowing that a mistake had been made decided to recall the batsman despite the game being on a knife edge.
“It was an obvious nick to most of us and it was awkward for a moment,” Marvan said after the game.
Cricket relations between Australia and Sri Lanka had been not so great those days with the chucking controversy down under fresh in players’ minds. Marvan’s gesture helped heal old wounds.
Marvan was also someone who played extremely hard and didn’t mind what the public opinion was. Not many players have had the unique honour of both captaining and coaching their country. Marvan did so and in 2014 he had become a public enemy in England for the Mankading of Jos Buttler.
Read More – The debate on foreign versus local coaches
The five-match series was levelled at 2-2 and the decider was being played at Birmingham. Sachithra Senanayake, observing that Buttler was backing up too far consulted with the dressing room on what to do.
In the previous game at Lord’s, Buttler had made his maiden ODI hundred. The Sri Lankans had been bemused by the amount of two and threes that Buttler was picking up. By then still a relatively new player, the team went into detail about Buttler’s running between the wickets
and detected that he was backing up too far. Marvan was convinced that the batsman was taking undue advantage. It was decided that if the batsman continued to do so, the Sri Lankans were going to run him out. It was Sachithra who executed the order and when the umpires consulted Angelo Mathews whether he was going ahead with the appeal, Mathews stood his ground and informed the umpires that the batsman had been warned several times before being run out.
The Sri Lankans faced a barrage of criticism. Marvan defended what his players had done. That didn’t win him many admirers in England with tabloids running him down. But soon people realized that here was a man who had once recalled a batsman during his playing days and sanity prevailed. And as for Buttler, he has been a serial offender when it comes to backing up too far and bowlers have shown him little mercy.
Marvan’s is a prime example of how to play the game – hard but fair. You don’t find him in social media lecturing on good and bad. You don’t find him in high profile meetings giving his opinions on what is right for the game and what is not right. He is also not one of those types who will constantly run down the administration. Since retirement, he has got involved and has tried to play his part. When he realized that he had been not up to the mark, he stepped down. With the big three – Sanga, Mahela and Dilshan – gone, the administration would have given him a long rope when Sri Lanka suffered back to back home series losses to India and Pakistan in 2015. But Marvan was straight. He knew it was time for someone else to try his luck and stepped down. Only a year ago, the team had won their maiden Test series in England with him as Head Coach.
