Sri Lankan legend Sanath Jayasuriya was leaning on the pickets that enclose SCG’s hallowed turf and was deeply engrossed in a conversation with a journalist on Thursday. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a senior citizen walk towards him with a bat in hand. The words, The 300 Club, printed on the splice of the handle of that bat caught his eye.
The old man proffered a maker for Jayasuriya to become the first man to sign that bat, his 340 against India at the R Premadasa Stadium in 1997. He got Mahela Jayawardena and Kumar Sangakkara to autograph that bat after practice but the enormous respect he had for Jayasuriya was there for all to see quite natural, you may say.
The bat was not the only reason Jayasuriya, now piloting Sri Lanka Cricket as Chairman of Selectors, walked down memory lane. He was one half of the partnership that changed the art of opening the innings in one-day cricket. Along with Romesh Kaluwitharana, the left-hander ensured that the approach at the start of an innings would not be sedate as was the case earlier.
Not even the fabulous West Indians Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes had such a cavalier approach as an opening combination as Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharana did 19 years ago. “It was in Australia that our captain Arjuna Ranatunga believed that it could be possible for both openers to attack,” Jayasuriya said, his eyes lighting up.
“I had opened innings earlier as well and it was Kalu who played the more explosive innings in the 1995-96 tri-series. It was only in the second final at the SCG that I attacked from the start because not only were we chasing a revised target in 25 overs but also lost Kalu and Aravinda (de Silva) cheaply,” Jayasuriya said of the 30 he made, his highest in the tri-series.
It was in the World Cup 1996 match against co-hosts India at the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi that Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharana fired in tandem for the first time, scoring 50 runs in five overs. The Indian fans, cramming the stadium, could not believe their eyes that both openers could play strokes from the word go. There was a new paradigm falling in place.
It set the stage for one of the more exciting opening combinations in cricket history. By the time the partnership was unhooked in 2004, they put on 3589 runs for the opening wicket in 105 starts. Most importantly, the pair defied the norm that openers only played out the first 15 overs and that the word explosive in the batting lexicon was associated only with the finishers.
Of course, Kaluwitharana was never a big six-hitting batsman but Jayasuriya expressed himself with a greater range of strokes that fetched him a record 270 sixes in his career only Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi has hit more sixes in ODIs than the Sri Lankan legend. And as many as 90 per cent of his sixes came when Ranatunga gave him and Kaluwitharana the licence to thrill.
At a time when the texture of batting in limited-over cricket has changed drastically, thanks to playing conditions that place tougher field restrictions, it seems inevitable that suggestions will be whispered that records of limited-over cricket must be segregated to respect those made when there was a fair contest between bat and ball.
Such segregation is only in the realms of conjecture and most unlikely to happen. But nobody and nothing can take away from Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharana the fact that, spurred by their leader Ranatunga, they were bold path-breakers who redefined entertainment in limited-over cricket.
