Who Are Ya?
So Muttiah Muralitharan has retired from Test cricket with 800 victims. What an outstanding achievement, especially considering the one-man crusade against him by Darrell Hair. While Murali's figures are pretty good and probably unlikely to be surpassed any time soon, how would he have fared with a wet ball that had all the consistency of a sponge on a pudding of a wicket in Bagnelstown? I mean, its all very well taking wickets on lovingly prepared strips in the sub-continent or on the Sydney dustbowl but nothing challenges a bowler's ability like trying to control a bar of soap on a patch of mud halfway up a mountain beside the 9th hole of a par three golf course. Thats always supposing you've survived the equally tasking problem of finding the ground in the first place.
And its not only Murali's ability that must be questioned when it comes to deciding greatness. Don Bradman famously signed off on his Test carrer with an average of 99.94. But how good would that average have been if he'd had to bat first on a ploughed field in Ballyeighan, faced by the fiery Dean? A pitch that made the Sabina Park corrugated strip look like a croquet lawn. And just how good would Jonty Rhodes or Derek Randall have looked, swooping in from backward point on the rutted, potholed surface of Pembroke's back pitch? At the very least they would have lost a couple of front teeth or suffered a twisted ankle. Its all very well looking good on Sky Sports 1, with a retinue of coaches making sure your left elbow is up or your run-up is precisely 22.5 steps before delivery but you can't call yourself a proper cricketer until you find yourself in the dressing room looking for a box. Or worse, finding someone else's box in your cricket bag. Cricketers these days expect everything laid on and wouldn't consider taking the field without stretching, oiling and having their ego massaged. What happened to those days when you rolled up an hour late, breakfast roll in one hand Woodbine in the other and told your skip that you'll take number three today and field at fine leg until the hangover was gone?
Thats not the only experience top class(?) cricketers are missing out on. Mike Gatting preferred lunch at Lords to facing Shane Warne and could show Desperate Dan a thing or two about eating cow pies. But Gatts never had the pleasure of the culinary delights of the Knockbrack salad. A veritable feast in itself but it was hard earned. Driving around the banjo country of north county Dublin was an experience of its own. And once the ground was safely found the changing room was a shed at long off that you would expect Jesse (http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/fastshow/characters/jesse.shtml) to pop out of to inform us on what he was mostly eating this week. Alas, it would appear that the Knockbrack salad and Knockbrack cricket have gone the way of Marathon bars, 10 bob notes and respect for authority. And on that note, it is sad to see that this is the last season that cricket will be played in Mount Murray in Mullingar. This was one of the most picturesque grounds in Leinster and you were never sure whether to bring a bat or a fishing rod out to the middle. I may return to the subject of Mount Murray, so if anyone has any stories, anecdotes or malicious gossip to share please put them in the comment box.
By Sean Smith
