cricket with balls

Yes, I am in Sri Lanka.

Yes, I am in Dambulla.

Yes, I am in the kandalama hotel.

But, no, I do not have dengue fever.

I don’t even have a cold.

Earlier in my trip i did throw up and shit myself at the same time.

In Dambulla, I have felt fine.

Yuvraj, who I saw at the buffet, looked fine as well.

I’m not saying he doesn’t have dengue fever, just that if he had it, it looks a whole shitload better than my food poisoning from earlier in the week.

And to be honest, enough though I have heard of dengue fever, I have no idea what it does to you, for all I know it means you can’t remember the words to Hotel California, but everything else is fine.

More importantly, I am ok.

And just for fun, enjoy this.

What sort of man is Shane Watson?

Don’t answer.

Not content with turning the Pakistani batting line up into his bitches, he also completely embarrassed his own bowlers with a display of bowling competency.

But to do it on the day the world should be bowing down for Murali, that is just unfair.

Murali had done what he needed to do, took the last wicket in a dramatic way.

He knows how to work a crowd.

Keep them interested thinking that it might just all go wrong, then after a protracted last wicket partnership take the wicket and let the crowd and team mates take over from there.

It was perfect.

The lighting was right, his family were crying, the crowd was roaring, his teammates carrying him and a seemingly slow motion celebration happening around him. All he needed was some music composed by James Newton Howard and a crane shot starting on a close up of his face before moving back to show the whole scene.

But Shane Watson is not a fan of bowlers who deliver the doosra, ask Saeed Ajmal.

And he knew that there was one thing he could do that would dirty Murali’s magic day, and that was him taking wickets.

Nothing ruins a magical day like Shane Watson’s bowling.

He is like rain on your wedding day, he makes everything wet and women cry because of him.

And he knows it.

Six wickets, talk about taking the piss.

Five at Lord’s was bad, but this was one more, scary.

Cricket just feels wrong when Shane Watson is taking wickets.

Before he went out to bowl he knew this was Murali’s day, and look what he did.

Disgusting behaviour.

Murali deserved better than that, Shane.

You pig.

No one ever just retires anymore.  They are always set to retire.

And Murali is set.

Sources close to him have set him, and so have the Sri Lankan website, so it can’t be long before he confirms that the Galle test against India is his last.

Murali has been slipping for a while now, in 09 he averaged 46 in test matches, which for someone as machine like as him had to be a sign.

He can still bowl, but test cricket might just be a touch too far for the 38 year old.

8 wickets are what he needs to be the first bowler to 800 wickets.  If he gets there it will be an amazing last test considering his recent test form.

As for me, I never truly warmed to Murali.

I was there when he was first called.

While I appreciate his ability to bowl so many overs and the size of his eyes, no one else is allowed to bowl with that action.  And that bothers me.

Most of the shit wasn’t his fault anyway, the dude just did his job, others campaigned for and against him, and he was used to change a flawed system for the better, even if it is still not perfect.

I already get the feeling that this will set off the debate on Warne Vs Murali, which will probably end up as boring as it is pointless.

Murali may not have been my favourite cricketer, but politics and elbows aside what a servant he was for Sri Lanka.

Some days it felt like he would bowl unchanged for the entire day, add to that living through the whole chucking shit, the boy had guts, so I may not love him, but I do respect him.

I was brought up deep in the bosom of a fundamental cricket family. My father was one, but it went deeper than that, with uncles, my grandfather, and cousins all getting in on the act.

At Christmas, Easter, Mother’s day, Father’s day, Football games, Birthdays or any other reason more than one of us was in the room together the talk would turn to cricket.

It was all passionately discussed, and by passionate I mean loud, and often (at least when myself and big daddy were involved) sweary.

If you wanted to win any cricket argument you had to be louder and more cock sure of yourself than at least one other Kimber, maybe two, and that is never easy.

My uncle Gary was a large, loud, sarcastic shit, a great uncle, but arguing with him was like wresting with an eel.  It didn’t matter how good you were, you could never find good place to grab, as he was so slippery.

Even though I never saw him play (well, was never old enough to remember) through all the stories over the year I feel like I was there watching them all.

The day he threw the bat (which weighed over 3 pounds) about 70 metres after a dismissal.  His running of a single as the ball was thrown over the head of the bowler when it was being returned to him.  How he, my dad and my other uncle ran Campbellfield Cricket Club.  And his work at leg slip.

Gary would talk about leg slip like it was the one position in cricket that could save us all.  Talk of the catches he took there went beyond mere legend; they became part of the Kimber DNA.  Should one of the non-cricket fan Kimbers find themselves one day in the leg slip position in a backyard game of cricket, they shall instantly just feel like they are in the right spot, and stay there waiting for the one that comes fast off the face of the bat.

Part of the allure of all of this leg slip talk was because when I grew up, the position would hardly be used in cricket.  I can’t think of a match when a leg slip was used unless there were just 5 fielders around the bat for a spinner and one of them happened to be a leg slip.

While that is still a leg slip, it is more about pressure than leg slip position.  Get as many fielders around the batsman as you can and hope he freaks out.

Now I see the leg slip coming back, slowly, but it is there.  Peter Siddle has bowled with one more than a few times.  Andre Nel used one with Surrey in the first game this year.  But my favourite was in the semi final of the IPL.

Yes it was too a spinner, Murali from memory, but being that it was in the latter stages of the semi final, there wasn’t 5 guys around the bat, just two, a slip, and a leg slip.

It just looked so good to me.  The leg slip just standing there as an attacking position, trying to catch the batsmen behind his back.  The ninja fielding position.

At the time I was commentating on test match sofa and I could barely contain my excitement at this event.  Unfortunately, like often happens in T20 cricket, something else grabbed my attention.

There was an emotional pull in seeing it.  At the time I couldn’t even think why I liked it so much, but over the next few days it all came back, the chats, the arguments, the yelling, and the lionisation of leg slip.

That leg slip meant something to me, and it was way more than just a reaction to great captaincy from Dhoni.

I could see my uncle smiling somewhere without even knowing why.  The smug bastard.

Long live the leg slip.