The game of cricket and quirky beliefs go hand in hand, no matter if you are the 12th man of your street’s gully cricket team or you captain your country in a World Cup.
There are cricketers who are superstitious, fans who become superstitious because of their favourite player/country’s performances and certain cricketing terms which always carry weird beliefs among cricketers and fans. The numbers 13, 87 which are also called the ‘devil’s number’ are always frowned upon in the cricketing world. 111, 222, 333 or ‘the Nelson’ is considered as fatal in the cricketing universe as seeing a grim in the Harry Potter universe.
Sachin Tendulkar used to wear his left pad first and always sat on the left window seat of the front row in the bus, just two of his many superstitions. Steve Waugh kept a red rag in his pocket as a lucky charm for the majority of his international career and South African Neil McKenzie feared stepping on white lines (including the batting crease). He also had to make sure that all toilet seats were down when he walked out to bat.
As far as Sri Lanka Cricket is concerned, the legendary skipper, Mahela Jayewardene is capable of giving any superstitious cricketer a good run for their money.
Cricket Bag to hotel before match day
The former skipper had the habit of taking his cricket bag and possessions back to the hotel before match day whereas his teammates did otherwise.
Opening up on this superstition in an Instagram Chat with his former teammate Russel Arnold, Jayewardene said, “this bag routine is something I picked up as a kid. I would take everything back and keep them properly and bring it back because I didn’t want any of my belongings, like pads or bats to be broken”
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“I always had that discipline to be clean and neat. I even kept my bats in a line neatly. It wasn’t OCD but it was somewhere close to OCD”
Always complete a run
It was a familiar sight for a Sri Lanka Cricket fan to see Mahela Jayewardene hastily completing an unnecessary single and running back to his batting crease after hitting a boundary. As Jayewardene explains, he has picked up this quirky habit as a 13/14-year-old when he used to get out often right after scoring a boundary.
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“You tend to play the next ball with the same mindset of the previous ball and could make a mistake. The way I would try to make sure that the previous ball was over (was by) by running to the other end and finishing that”
“But the thing I didn’t understand earlier was when I stepped into international arena, you hit a boundary off a chirpy bowler and you tend to go to the other end, you are going to get an earful which I didn’t plan as a kid. It was a bad habit”
No practice balls on match day
On match day, the current Mumbai Indians head coach did not face any practice balls before the actual game which is complete opposite to his best mate Kumar Sangakkara who used to want a million balls thrown at him.
“I have this mental thing that (for me) the game starts when I walk in and play the first ball in the match. So, I wouldn’t hit any practice shots during warm-up. I had 20 catches off the bat before the game to watch the ball and that’s it. It was a kind of mental preparation for me so that I know I was ready to face the first ball”
“Practice on the day before, I did all that, but on game day, no balls for me”
Kiss on bat every ball
Similarly, Jayewardene was often seen kissing the bat, showing his affection towards his bat in between deliveries, kissing the blade in order to bring him luck. But this obsession gradually faded away as he only did it after reaching a milestone later in his career.
Crossing the boundary with left foot
In an ‘AMA’ session hosted by ICC on reddit for the 2015 ICC World Cup, Mahela Jayewardene was asked about his superstitions by a fan and he replied, “I would always cross the boundary line with my left leg”.
Apart from Jayewardene, another former Sri Lanka skipper, Sanath Jayasuriya had the superstition of checking his entire cricket kit i.e. his gloves, pads, helmet, bat and even his pockets before facing each ball. He followed this routine in every match he played at the international level. Current T20I skipper Lasith Malinga also believes in luck, you’ll notice him give the ball a little peck at the top of his mark. You could find many more Sri Lanka cricketers with these unusual habits.
It’s fair to say, superstitious or not, whatever Jayewardene did, worked for him as the veteran finally ended up with more than 25,000 international runs for Sri Lanka, many trophies including a World T20 win and went down as one of the legends of cricketing history.
