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Not long ago, Jayasuriya announced his retirement from test cricket. Usually that means, ‘I’m trying to extend my limited overs’ career’. Chaminda Vaas retired from test cricket recently but wasn’t picked for the shorter version. Muralitharan announced a retirement plan. Flintoff, let’s not get started on him.
Look around, it’s tough to keep tabs on who’s retired from what form. Jayasuriya still plays IPL, ODIs, T20 internationals. He was dropped from his Mumbai Indians team, not that it helped them much. He just played two T20s for Lanka, not that it helped them much.
The twin single digit scores aside, why is he still playing – to bowl his four overs, pick a couple of wickets. Is his re-emergence planned on the lines of Shahid Afridi? In that case should he become a bowling all-rounder who bats in the middle order? Who knows, by next year’s T20 World Cup he could be set like Shahid.
Clearly Jaysuriya is jaded, just as we’re jaded watching him play. The sole purpose of this prolonged career could be 1) marvel at a forty-year-olds fitness 2) live in the golden era of the 90s. 3) Keep new talent on hold
Jayasuriya’s career can go on forever. He could still make another comeback in the ODIs, there’s old favourites India, after all. While they’re at it, they can reunite him with a not-so young Kalu. And then Kalu can retire as Kambli did - and we’ll say, but how did he retire if he wasn’t playing? Who knows, maybe Kalu has already retired.
But not Sanath. His retirement can wait, while the Warnapuras of Sri Lankan cricket are told to hang on – and ultimately hang themselves waiting for that illusive break.
We announce Sanath Jayasuriya’s retirement.
Why did Shane Bond play
He was not injured.
Fitness aside, can you put an age to Shane Bond? Not that he’s timeless, but he doesn’t look any particular age. Almost like his twin, Putin. Can you put an age to Putin?
Even Bond doesn’t know he’s 34. It’s like Afridi doesn’t know he’s forty or Jayasuriya doesn’t know he’s a hundred or Sachin doesn’t know he’s not eighteen. And what the hell is age but a number that lies.
But Bond is 34, that’s what his birth certificate says. What this cert doesn’t say is that he’s played 17 tests strewn all over the Lord of the Rings sets, and a pocketful of one-dayers.
Shane Bond returned to play Sri Lanka in a twenty20. He returned in body, not in spirit. Bond doesn’t have spirit. If he was an alcoholic, even then he wouldn’t have any spirit.
He is a limp biscuit. Dipped in a Delhi ICL team, that was so bad, to conform he had to be equally bad. Ditto with Lara and his Mumbai Champs.
Bond’s ICL jaunt was called Delhi Giants and they made a midget out of him. They lost everything, except maybe games against the Champs, which both teams lost.
This of course cannot be proven as there are no records of the ICL. For the record, Bond’s non-existent spirit was broken by Dilshan, four fours of his first over.
Later, standing alongside Vettori he seemed small, almost like a left arm spinner. Vettori though, still didn’t look like a quick bowler.
Bond pulled it back, but not because of his bowling, the zip was missing, and the buttons too. He bowled yorkers that weren’t, speeds that were ICL-like at best.
There was a smallness to him, and that was sad. He just needs to play India again. On conditions of anonymity, Vettori told me, 'if not for India I would be half the bowler I am.'
That would be the bitter half.
Plug your ears. Andy Moles is about to puke.
Help! New Zealand just won a Twenty20. If they win the next one, you know what you’ll hear:
"Of course the Lankans will say that they won the series. That's fine. Our answer is there have been four games of cricket, they have won two, and we have won two. So we are level going into the one day series..”
You may ask, who is this Andy Moles? That's a tough question.
Without putting him down as a nobody who wants to be more than a somebody, let's call him the Kiwi coach.
You know what he said when the Kiwis won the T20s v India:
"Of course the Indians will say that they won the series. That's fine. Our answer is there have been six games of cricket, they have won three, and we have won three. So we are level going into the [Test] series. They outplayed us in the one-dayers, but we are looking forward to the Test series."
Suddenly even Greg seems like a gem of a guy.
