Excerpt from remarks made by former England captain Nasser Hussain at the 125th anniversary of the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo.
Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan cricketers are a unique blend of everything. Listen, you’ve got three here (Mahela, Sidath, Marvan) I’ve got a young son, not so young actually, he’s in the audience today.
I’d ask him to YouTube or Google the way these three bat. The Sri Lankan cricket has that elegance and grace about it, and technically brilliant.
They have that unorthodoxy about it. For every Mahela or Marvan or Sidath, you have a Jayasuriya or Dilshan.
Or with the ball, you have the three M’s in Malinga, Murali, Mendis. But you also have that feistiness of Ranatunga, not to be bullied.
I don’t care if you’re Shane Warn, Glenn McGrath, whoever, you ain’t bullying us. They’re also the nicest people ever off the field.
Kumar Sangakkara, I know he played for the other cricket club that we can’t mention. But Kumar Sangakkara off the field would treat you so nicely. Morning, Nasser. How’s the family, Nasser?
Would you like to come to our restaurant tonight, Nasser? Love you, Nasser. You’d walk out to middle and he’d say, come on, lads, let Nasser enjoy the last game he’s ever going to play for England.
Here comes the worst batter to ever play for England. Here is the worst captain that ever captained England. So they go from the nicest people on the planet until you cross that white line.
And then they become the most difficult people to play against. Mahela was slightly different. Mahela was that smiling assassin.
He would just smile all the way through his double hundred. And it hit, what really annoyed me about Mahela. He will hit you for four.
And if that’s not bad enough, he would run to the other end and tap the crease. Mahela, it’s gone for four. That’s like the 30th four you’ve hit.
Why do you have to run to the other end? And tap the crease every single time? And the bowlers used to say, you know, Marvan hit you through the offside. They had everything.
They had the feistiness. They had the unorthodoxy. Technically brilliant. Feisty captains in Ranatunga all the way through. And I hope, I know there’s some present cricketers in the room.
I really hope it continues. There are green shoots of recovery. The way they’re playing in Bangladesh. And may not have the names of some of the greats that we’re talking about.
But there are some green shoots of recovery. As long as recovery doesn’t happen in England this summer, I’ll be happy.