The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (10 page)

Unfortunately, Sheila doesn’t. I have to convince her that I am working even when I am staring out of the window. My morning hangover muffles her shrieks. Unable to fight back, I let the moment pass and it always does. I wonder if cricketers have money troubles or screeching wives.

Saturday night is spent like most Saturday nights. On Ari’s balcony with bottles. Ari’s balcony is the only one on de Saram Road with a clear view of the sea. We watch stray cats negotiate the tiles of rooftops. There is barely enough room to swing one of them on this ledge with parapets. I am drinking my usual and Ari has a glass of what looks like urine.

‘Ambarella juice. Rochelle gave Manouri a blender. Have some. Good for your insides, Wije.’

I sip some through the straw. The type a drowning man would clutch at.

The drink is not as putrid as I thought. I want to tell Ari that my insides are rotting, and even though this is the place, it is perhaps not the time.

‘Rochelle is getting married, no? Do you Burgher buggers have to give dowry?’

‘Nope,’ says Ari, pouring the urine-coloured ambarella into the glass-coloured glass. ‘We just put on booze and fry cutlets.’

Cushioned in sea breeze, Ari and I discuss the possibility of an ambidextrous bowler. Ari thinks the idea is nonsense and even though I argue, I secretly agree. We reminisce about 1983, the year Sheila and I and little Garfield moved to Mount Lavinia, next door to Ari, his first wife Norma, and the girls.

We talk about the riots. Our friends Krish and Nathan who fled to Canada. We talk about Kapil Dev’s high catch to dismiss the great Viv Richards, how he plucked the World Cup seemingly out of the air. I tell him how Kapil refused me a one-on-one because I wrote India off in my preview of the final. We savour the warm air and toast to memories.

‘Some fellow has called you?’

‘Satyakumar Gokulanath. Old Tamil gentleman. Former Royal fielding coach. Can we chat with him at your place?’

‘Why?’

‘Sheila doesn’t like me drinking at home.’

‘But you still do.’

‘Not that. Were you at the ’83 Royal–Thomian?’

‘Of course. I had liver problems that year. Remember?’

Ari is now pouring arrack and I am swimming in my thoughts.

‘I didn’t know you then. We only met in July when they came to burn Nathan’s house.’

‘Ah. Right. Right. The Royal–Tho was in March… obviously. My first sober Big Match since 1952.’ He grins. ‘′52 I got cockered. Thora won. ′53 I got even more cockered and we won by an innings!’

The pre-poya moon casts a white glow on Ari’s balcony and reflects off his bald spot. In the distance, the sea snores.

‘I got cockered every year for the next thirty years, but only two more results. We won in ’64, they won in ’69. Then in ’83 I had my hepatitis scare. Must look after the liver, no? You lose your liver, you can’t live.’

Ari is so engrossed in his chatter he fails to notice the look on my face.

‘So in 1983 I stay sober. And the year I am sober those beggars thrash us.’

Ari grins.

‘Now I realise that in life and in cricket, whether I booze or not, what will be, will be.’

We croak a few refrains of ‘Que Sera’ and I lift my glass to the being of what will be.

Ari’s eyes narrow. ‘You know that Royal cheated?’

I roll my eyes.

‘Listen to this. The whole Royal team were wearing blue and yellow caps when they were bowling. Who does that?’ ‘Blue and gold.’

‘Yellow. If that is gold, I’m a Chinaman with a ponytail. Wije, do you know what I saw?’

‘The Royalists raping your little girls in style?’

‘Apart from that. Everyone said I am sour grapes, that I was drunk. Bullshit. I was fully sober. I saw what I saw.’

‘What, so?’

‘There were five bowlers in the Royal team. Their spinner took 5 wickets, their pacey took 3. According to the records, that is.’

‘So?’

‘I swear to this day. On Norma’s grave, rest her soul.’ He crosses himself. ‘In the second innings, there was a sixth bowler on that field. He took all the wickets. No one noticed except me.’

When he tramples Manouri’s flowerpots, I know there is going to be trouble. Ari, not noticing, leads us up his garden path to the chairs on the lawn. We take seats around a formica table, sheltered by araliya trees. It is the place where Ari sees guests he doesn’t want his wife to see.

With Satyakumar Gokulanath, there is plenty not to see. He mumbles and shakes. His face is all jowls and his hair is dyed oily black. He wears a faded Chinese collar shirt adorned with multiple food stains. His slacks are tented over his twig legs and his sandals are covered in Manouri’s compost. He looks like he has spent his whole life painting houses without ever bothering to change clothes.

I have seen him before at the Visible Bar in Katubedda and at the Kaanuwa in Moratumulla. He is one of those drunks who stand at the bar talking to no one. At the Kaanuwa, everyone stands – the carpenters, the trishaw drivers, the sportswriters who miss their buses. I have seen Gokulanath bare his beedi-stained teeth at four-finger widths of neat gal arrack and knock it back in one gulp. Gal is a close relative of turpentine and just as tasty. Strange for this creature to be coaching a Colombo 7 school.

The day is pleasant. Drinks cool, sunshine bright, grass green, company peculiar. Ari has put on a spread of rambutan, shelled and deseeded so as not to offend our fragile teeth. I could not think of a worse hell than living in a house with six ladies, but I see it has its advantages. Our guest has arrived drunk and is demanding more. Before we begin, he wants to finalise the fee.

Mr S. Gokulanath was the assistant coach of the Royal 2nd XI from 1968 to 1997. He taught PT and environmental studies at Royal to Forms 2–3. When the government changed in ’70, he taught PE and social studies to Grades 7–8. When the government changed again in ’77, he was teaching saramba and parisaraya to Years 8–9. There is a Sinhalese phrase which translated reads: ‘The changing of the pillow will not cure the headache.’

Gokulanath is a skeletal man with bad posture. He is a Jaffna Tamil who speaks impeccable Sinhalese, but shaky English. I have translated, paraphrased and attempted to replicate.

He spends a full hour tanking up on booze while Ari ribs me about Sunday’s classified debacle. Gokulanath tells us the reason he was reading the Sunday classifieds that day was to look for work. After twenty-nine years of service, he was sacked from Royal College on a false allegation and was not given his thirty-year bonus or his pension.

We voice our sympathy and Ari talks about what snakes the Royalists are.

We discuss Lanka’s prospects for the World Cup, followed by the Murali saga. This topic does a couple of rounds and then Gokul speaks. ‘Y’all are Thomians, no?’

Ari nods his head. I shake mine. ‘Maliyadeva.’

‘What I’m telling, please write to papers. And to Thomian magazine. Royal is not good. It is changed. Thirty years and they throw me out, because I am Tamil. Can you believe?’

I decide to get down to business, before he repeats the story for the third time. ‘Did Pradeep Mathew play for Royal?’

‘Pradeepan? Yes, yes. But not in legal way.’

Ari puts away the bottle and asks, ‘So in what way?’

And then he tells us.

The story begins in Soysapura Flats in Moratuwa and is punctuated by coughs. The narrator sticks beedis into the gaps in his teeth and draws phlegm from his soul. ‘He told me he went to Royal… urrrgg… so I told him to come for practice.’

Gokulanath coached six-a-side tennis-ball cricket at the Soysapura grounds, surrounded by balconies of dirty laundry and flats filled with gangsters like Moratu Sumith, Maiyya and Goo Cheena.

The Soysapura scene was known for its hard-hitting batsmen and bowlers of questionable action. Both Gokul and Pradeep hailed from the flats, though they didn’t meet till Gokul’s Katubedda Kings took on young Pradeep’s Rawatawatte Fingara Club.

Gokul was immediately impressed. ‘Left-arm seam. Ammataudu. You should’ve seen. Every ball pitching off stump, then doing different things. Cutting in, cutting out, keeping low. Whole afternoon, one spot. Then he bowls right-hand. I couldn’t believe. I have never seen bowling like that.’

In six-a-side tennis-ball cricket, there really is nowhere for a bowler to hide, but Pradeep ended up getting bounce, turn, and, most importantly, wickets. ‘So I ask him… urrg… why he never come for Royal practice? He tells me his parents send him for tuition.’

Gokul didn’t realise Mathew was from Thurstan till he had played him in four games for the 2nd XI. ‘But how to sack best bowler I have coached?’

The boy had put in solid performances as the first change bowler. In the last game before he was found out, Mathew opened the bowling and took 5–39 against St Sylvesters.

‘Ari darling. Me and Melissa are going, OK?’ It is the shrill voice of Manouri Byrd. She is peering over round spectacles from the balcony and pretends not to see me. Ari leaves us to go to church. Before he goes, he drags me into his workshop. The fluorescent bulb lights up the rust and the dust, the broken machines and the grounded Ford. He hands me a cassette recorder.

‘Here, Wije. This fellow is mad. But in case he says something useful, press that and keep. And don’t give him too much drink. I’m off.’

‘What’s that?’ I ask, pointing to a clunky contraption, shaped like a miniature washing machine.

‘A 1965 Polaroid 20 Series Swinger. Just 200 bucks from some aachchi in Dehiwela.’

Only Ari would be proud of robbing old ladies.

‘Does it work?’

He snaps a shot of me placing the tape recorder before Gokul below a darkening sky. The picture that comes out is blank. Ari begins flapping it, then Manouri shouts from the balcony and he runs off. I’m left alone with Gokul.

I ask what he did when he found out Mathew was a Thurstan boy. ‘I told head coach, there is boy who can be BATA Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year, if we get him to Royal. For once head coach listens to me.’

Gokulanath then drops ash onto his lap and topples his drink into the rambutan.

Mathew could not be admitted to Royal due to class overcrowding. The head coach and Gokul set up a Tamil scholarship programme that would… the details fly over my head as Gokul rambles on and clears phlegm from his throat. Suffice to say that it began in October 1982 and was concluded in February 1984, four months after Mathew had passed his London A-levels and was too old to play school cricket.

Nevertheless, the boy practised with the Royal 1st team squad and our man Gokul got a promotion to 1st XI fielding coach for his find of the season. He claims to have helped Mathew develop his unusual deliveries.

‘Tamils have to be twice as good as Sinhalese to be recognised. I played for Jaffna St John’s. I bowled googly. Look at these fingers. I could spin the ball on water. Pradeepan’s were even longer.’

He wraps his spider-like fingers around his glass and coughs into his other hand. ‘Pradeepan… urrg… no discipline, no control. I told he must empty his head of thoughts. Let the ball come to him. To think of nothing when he lets go.’

The ’82 season passed without incident. Mathew attended practice, played a few friendlies, worked on his bowling and his fielding, helped along by Mr Gokul. The head coach wouldn’t put him in the side till the deal with Thurstan College, the Royal Admissions Secretariat and the Royal College Scholarship Fund was finalised. The boy told his family he was going to Royal for tuition class. To keep up the façade, Gokul would help him with his homework after practice.

The ’83 Royal side was captained by Chulaka Algama and was top-heavy with quality all-rounders like Sandesh Jayawardena, Malik Malalasekera and Rochana Amarasinghe. They had three coaches, two specialist trainers and a fitness instructor. The Sri Lankan national team at the time barely had a manager.

The results were plain to see. The team, overflowing with experience and variety, notched up six consecutive wins against the likes of Isipathana, Richmond and Prince of Wales. Mathew meanwhile had developed the stamina to play as a fast bowler and had perfected the actions of Bob Willis, Mohinder Binny and the entire Royal 1st and 2nd side squads.

But the fitness instructor’s regimen was starting to reveal cracks. ‘That fitness coach was a pandithaya. Instead of Nihal Sir, we had to call him Sir Nihal. Like he’s some English lord. What fitness? Bugger couldn’t even jog.’ Wrist fractures, ankle injuries, hamstring and groin strains spread through the team like influenza. And in desperation, the head coach turned to Pradeep.

Ari returns from church just as the story enters the realm of fantasy. ‘Did you pass any holy water, Father Byrd?’ Religion is one of the many topics Ari and I argue over.

‘Wije, I told you I don’t like you blaspheming in my garden. Just wait till you’re close to your death, only then you’ll realise the value of God.’

Poor Ari. I really should tell him.

As Gokul stumbles to the toilet, Ari points to his nose and waves away a smell. ‘Looks like a bittter bugger. Bittter with three ts. And I don’t accept this right-hand, left-hand bullshit.’

Mathew featured in four games before the Big Match. Around that time, it was compulsory for every Royal cricketer to wear a large sunhat, cover their face in sunscreen and wear Dean Jones-style shades. The sunglasses offended the visiting Nalanda College coach, who complained to the Sri Lanka Schools Cricket Board, SLSCB. They agreed that sunglasses were unsuitable accessories for school cricket. The sunscreen escaped scrutiny.

Listen carefully. This is what a drunken bitter ex-schoolmaster is having us believe. Pradeep Mathew appeared for Royal, but
not as himself

In the first match he wore a double T-shirt and played the role of burly pacey Nalliah de Silva. Against Nalanda, he wore a gold chain and mimicked Chanaka Devarajan, de Silva’s new ball partner. He took four wickets and ripped the spine out of a Nalanda batting line-up featuring future international stars Roshan Gurusinha and Hashan Mahanama.

In the St Josephs match, he masqueraded as star spinner Rochana Amarasinghe, while his namesake recuperated from an ankle sprain. His spell of 6–72 livened up an otherwise drab game.