Watching sport can be an irksome exercise in anxiousness. You watch, you admire, curse, praise, fight over, imitate, applaud, weep, scream, proselytize and even evangelise. But, there is hardly anything you do that can affect what happens on screen, or at the ground, or in your idol’s mind.
The anxiety reaches a crescendo when you know a player is going to hang up his boots. You can clearly see that the team still needs him/her. There’s no one any near to filling his/her boots, but there’s nothing you can do. You write open letters, sign petitions, pray and vow to give up the sport, but to no avail.
The World Cup quarterfinal was the last time we saw Mahela Jayawardene, Misbah-ul-Haq, Shahid Afridi and Kumar Sangakkara in action. In ODIs, at least. And it will take a while before you get to see four such delightful characters play in a tournament, together or against one other again.
Beauty – Mahela Jayawardene
One half of the joy token that has served Sri Lanka so well over these years – Mahela Jayawardene, was a thing of beauty. He was the archetypal touch player you would pay to watch. There was never anything capricious about the former captain, but on his day, he could be as destructive as any.
There were hardly any deliveries that were treated indignantly. Drives caressed through packed fields, dexterous flicks would find the boundary before you could pick your jaw off the ground, sixes hit with minimum effort and runs scored by the truckloads. As a fielder, safe as any, Jayawardene was a player any team would have loved to have.
It was perhaps portentous of the run-scoring abilities he possessed when he made his Sri Lanka debut in that historic Test against India in 1997. 11,000+ Test runs, 12,000+ ODI runs and 1,400+ T20I runs followed. He inscribed his name alongside the biggest of names. Jayawardene was also the man for the big occasion. Champion-like performances in the 2011 World Cup final in Mumbai, 2007 World Cup semifinal, and the 2014 Asia Cup final underline that.
In spite of vaunting of a career that would make many go green with envy, Jayawardene was only able to shrug the monkey off his and Sri Lanka’s backs by helping them claim their first World title since 1996 in his penultimate year. He signed off from the T20 format with a win over India on a fairytale night in Mirpur. Sri Lanka ended their jinx with a World T20 triumph. He enjoyed a winning send-off in the Tests as well when Sri Lanka blanked Pakistan in a two-Test series in August last. A crucial hundred against Afghanistan is all Jayawardene will have to remember from his final World Cup where his side was ousted by South Africa.
In the everlasting, stupendously evolving art that is cricket, a game that seems to now be encompassing brutality and innovation like never before, Jayawardene will always stand out as one of the few players who could paint the game beautiful with the bat. Unfortunately, Jayawardene slowly painted himself out of the picture before his fans could give him a rousing send-off.
Bravado – Misbah-ul-Haq
Misbal-ul-Haq’s primary currency was courage and an ability to stand firm in the face of disaster, a characteristic made more valuable in world cricket these days. Misbah was never renowned for his ability to tear into attacks nor could he leave viewers rubbing eyes in disbelief with knocks oozing with class and all-round strokeplay. But what he lacked in his game, he made it up with perseverance and the will to fight like none other. The gift to dig his heels in and fight also turned out to be his curse.
His knock in the 2007 T20 WC final nearly helped Pakistan complete a stunning turnaround against India, but he will be remembered more for electing to play the scoop when in touching distance of the win. More criticism followed after his painstakingly-slow knock during the World Cup 2011 semifinal against India. He chose to respond by helping Pakistan complete a clean sweep over top-ranked England in Tests in 2012 and victory over India in a three-ODI series in 2012-13
Pakistan is no ordinary team and and you would need more than the usual dose of courage to lead the side. He was accused of opiating games, but if it wasn’t for Misbah and his ability to stave off attacks, Pakistan would have often been left wondering why they were back in the hotel rooms when they should have been out on the field letting opponents know Pakistanis never give up.
The game unfortunately does not script perfect endings for the players, it does give them plenty of opportunities to do so though. Misbah’s career can be summed up with that word ‘opportunities’. Unfortunately for him, invariably they were missed. His career never reached the highs it should have. It sputtered in parts, exploded in bits and was mostly left waiting for the rest of his team to show the same kind of fight he was.
Brutality – Shahid Afridi
You never knew what you would get with Shahid Afridi. When he announced himself with a record-smashing hundred in just his second ODI, there was suddenly an aura of invincibility about him. He could kill you off in a matter of minutes. But that was all you needed, too, to kill him and his contribution to the game.
There’s a bit of Gennaro Gattuso in the Pakistan allrounder. He’s all heart, and almost no thought. He could look totally out of place when things he wanted to come off didn’t, but when things ticked for the allrounder there was devastation.
Arriving at the scene as a dashing batsman who could flay attacks at will, Afridi turned out to be Pakistan’s biggest crowd-puller. But his freakish batting saw him copping a fair share of failures as well. He was never one cut out for the long format and retired from Tests in 2010. His value in the shorter formats increased manifold when he started doing well with the ball as well. Add to this performances like the 45-ball hundred against India in 2005, the Man-of-the-Series performance in the 2007 World T20, and his brilliant cameos during the 2014 Asia Cup and Afridi only further enhanced his reputation as one of world cricket’s biggest crowd puller.
He infuriated and charmed in equal measure, left you stunned either with an onslaught that only he could conjure, or with the most untimely dismissals. Shahid Afridi was a character as colourful, as unpredictable and as spell-binding as they came.
The Beast – Kumar Sangakkara
Timing and placement over mindless slogging, delectable and delicate where you would otherwise find brute force, Sangakkara will leave behind a legacy that would be hard to match. Add to all this that accent! No one had ever scored four back-to-back hundreds in ODIs. Sangakkara’s imperious form and quenchless thirst for runs, however, were never going to stop him from getting there.
This appetite for runs that has come to define him was conspicuous by its absence when he started off. Although not a failure, he took all of 44 internationals to make his first hundred. Once that was out of the way, however, Sangakkara started scripting one epic after another. None more so than his hundreds against Australia New Zealand in Hobart and Wellington respectively circa 2007.
Being handed the reins of the national team catapulted his abilities. He scored like his life depended on it, and Sri Lanka prospered. Test series wins followed. They made it to the 2011 World Cup final before MS Dhoni and Gautam Gambhir combined to take the game and the trophy away from the classy left-hander. He, like Jayawardene, ended his yearning for a World title with the T20 triumph in 2014.
He looked all set to carry the country on his shoulders alone during this World Cup, but, with many of his teammates showing up missing either through injury or lack of form, it turned out to be a mission even he couldn’t see completed.
