There was a moment there, on the final day of the final Test, when an unlikely hope began to stir. Chasing 324 on a fifth-day pitch after weeks of embarrassment by spin, there was little chance that Australia was going to pull out something special. But then David Warner came out and hit a gear he had not reached all series, while Shaun Marsh gave solid support.
There are days when a player is just… on. Warner was attacking not with abandon but with clarity. His footwork around the crease was manic. Even in defence, he pressured every ball. In an over from Rangana Herath, Sri Lanka’s left-arm spinner who had such damage all series, Warner drove him off the front foot and cut him off the back foot to almost the same spot on the cover fence.
Dhananjaya de Silva slipped him a full toss, Warner slapped six over mid-wicket. Dilruwan Perera bowled full, Warner drove so hard that a straight mid-off who should have sauntered to the ball watched it scream past through the dirt. After that he got busy, working the singles, pelting the seconds, picking his partner’s runs with as much concentration as his own.
Marsh was snared at short leg before lunch. Warner came back after it and got his fifty, down the pitch to clip through mid-wicket, back to cut through point. Steve Smith was at the other end, his own first-innings century fresh in his mind. A repeat from Australia’s captain and vice-captain, you thought, and something remarkable could happen.
Then came Herath. That familiar unassuming approach, the same round-arm dollop as though lobbing a potato-masher into a German trench. In Galle he had bowled a length that convinced Smith to jump back and cut with the spin, only for the ball to skip on into the top of off stump. Here in Colombo it was the same but worse, less ball than hockey puck, the Australian captain’s bat stranded over his shoulder as the object it dreamed of hitting spat through to the target.
The weight of probability was always likely to tell – remarkable things are made so by scarcity. But the subsidence was extreme. All series, Herath has bowled like closing time at the bakery – buy the first, then get six free. Adam Voges missed a straight ball the same over. A distracted Warner left Perera, Moises Henriques left his crease, and both were punished. The rest fell to Herath, seven all told in a sticky pile, less than 23 overs totalled since the first wicket fell. How sweetly sings the bird of hope before they yank its feathers out.
Three-nil, whited out, the snowblind Australians saw Sri Lanka huddle in a winter penguin crush. Herath was the emperor, nearly assassinated with affection at the centre. Emotion and its reflected meaning. It was brief, Herath with the awareness to waddle free of the melee, the first to walk to the batsmen and shake hands.
This article was supposed to be a series review, but the series review is: Herath. As the dust settled, his achievement’s magnitude grew more distinct. A haul of 28 wickets, at fewer than 13 runs apiece, and one every 31 balls. No left-arm bowler of any stripe has taken more in three Tests. Of all spinners, Abdul Qadir and Muttiah Muralitharan once managed 30. The only greater is Harbhajan Singh’s 32 in his 2001 opus (morally 33 given Steve Waugh palmed a stump-bound deflection from its target and was instead out handled the ball). Just those three, then Herath, alongside another series of 28 from Muralitharan. As so often for the current man, their two careers twinned, inseparable.
Some players are easy to love. Between Australia and England, even cricket devotees struggle with affection for the other’s greats, taking refuge in more dispassionate admiration. Other teams allow freer rein: the recent outpourings for Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan; the Christ-struck reverence for a bemused AB de Villiers; the goodwill for mighty Carlos Brathwaite.
Herath is another such. He is an unlikely cricketer, an athlete in disguise. Short, chubby, and unassuming, he could have wandered out from behind any shop counter in the country to take his place at the crease. He’s 38 and looks it, ancient for sport and middle-aged everywhere else. He starts his spells like a wombat, snuffling around in the dust at one end of the pitch, figuring out where to dig.
That description fires off a sequence of onomatopoeic word association: wombat, waddle, stumble, trundle, grumble, womble. Maybe a womble is what he calls to mind most: furry, round of belly, slow-moving, adorable. Wimbledon Common might be a spiritual home: he has a better batting average in England than Virat Kohli. The flecks of silver in his hair only make him seem friendlier: on Cricketers You’d Most Like to Hug he consistently polls top three.
He’s also very, very good at his job. Appearances only deceive. The anti Jeff Thomson, he just shuffles up and goes plop. Curls the ball down the other end, dropping it on the batsman. They look like lobs but they aren’t, except the few that are. Some dip late, some bustle through like late commuters. The degree of turn changes by the ball.
“He’s a very tough character to face, he’s always at you, he’s always at your stumps,” said Smith after the series, harried in the recollection as a batsman hunted down by Herath five times out of six. “He changes his pace beautifully and bowls from different parts of the crease, changes his angles up. You never really get a freebie off him or an easy boundary.” The Sri Lankan skipper, by contrast, was able to lean back in his chair and grin. “No matter how well you play spin, it is a nightmare facing Rangana Herath,” beamed Angelo Mathews.
The accuracy is unrelenting, the apparent innocuousness unnerving. Batsmen think they have it covered, then another ball is taking pad, evading bat, clipping edge. Famous spinners pull their magic tricks with showmanship, with flapping doves and bright scarves and pyrotechnics. Herath is a dowdy uncle with a sleight-of-hand move in the corner at a family barbeque. He simply shows you a cricket ball that is in front of you, then makes it appear behind you. Got your nose.
Where military terms are too often employed in sport, Herath is doubtless described as a warrior. He’s better described as a warhorse. He rumbles and creaks into the contest like the SFX of a Warcraft catapult. His age is played up – Mathews calls him “the old man” – but physical strain was real in this match. After a 73-run partnership in the first innings that drove Australia to distraction, Josh Hazlewood’s sole method of removing a batsman from the contest proved to be by nailing him square in the box. So pressed were the grapes of Herath as to produce a little whine. This tough character had to retire hurt.
Herath couldn’t open the bowling, and when he appeared it was with obvious pain. It hampered his action, his drive through the crease was missing, and Australia capitalised with by far their biggest partnership of the series – 246 between Marsh and Smith. A couple of sessions later, in his 23rd over, Herath finally found his range to drag Smith’s foot a centimetre out of the crease. Stumped. To that point, Herath had 0-48. In his next 15 overs he took 6-33.
Revenge came with the five-for via Hazlewood, who tried to smash a couple more Herath balls but was bowled for a duck. More impressive was Herath’s fielding, including a full-length dive off his own bowling that involved landing heavily on his front. It hurt to watch from a hundred yards away. Commitment to his side could not have been clearer, his desire to set the standard, to be the senior figurehead, to help this young team develop.
Twelve years ago, Rangana Herath played in another whitewash. Also in Sri Lanka, also against Australia. The series when Murali took that matching tally of 28 wickets in three Tests. Sri Lanka lost all of them.
It was a straight shoot-out. Shane Warne and Murali took five-wicket hauls in eight of the first nine innings of the series (Murali took four in the other, but Australia collapsed too fast against pace). The key was that while Murali got the numbers, Australia’s batsmen kept him at bay long enough to score from others first. The efforts of Darren Lehmann and Damien Martyn are best remembered, but Adam Gilchrist, Justin Langer, and Matthew Hayden each made a hundred, while Ricky Ponting and Simon Katich nearly did. Eighteen of Murali’s wickets were specialist batsmen, but six already had centuries and three had fifties by the time he got them out.
Herath came into that side for the third Test and took four in the second innings, including Ponting for 20, Martyn for 5 and Warne for a duck. Then straight back out. He’d debuted against Australia in Galle in 1999, had his two Tests rained off, and played once in the five years since. He couldn’t get away from Murali. If he played it was in the champion’s absence, or as a top-up for a specific match. In 11 years that their careers overlapped, Herath played 22 Tests.
Even now, he still comes second. The first Test was played at the ground that is slated to be named after Muralitharan, in Murali’s home town of Kandy, while all the pre-match press was on Murali’s brief employment by Cricket Australia. While conspiracy theories circulated about Murali tampering with the Pallekele pitch, Herath was standing on it, with Australia 69-2 after whomping Sri Lanka for 117.
Herath had bowled Joe Burns the previous evening, through a pinball of feet and pads for 3. The second morning he stood regarding Smith, then drew him down the pitch to be stumped for the first time. He got Usman Khawaja in his next over. The veteran opened the gate for Lakshan Sandakan to bolt through, fizzing the ball with debutant energy. Both would take four wickets. The second innings would be Hezza again, 5-54 as he plucked the middle order out of Australia’s chase, then knocked over Steve O’Keefe’s 98-ball defensive stonewall. Remember that catapult.
Six more wickets came at Galle, including a hat-trick almost forgotten in the chaos. Then the end at Colombo, Herath’s crowning glory, 13 in the match on the pitch demanding most toil. His predecessor had the wizardry, but it was Herath securing the trophy that bears Murali’s name.
This is the final enchantment of Herath’s career, that it came after so many years of Murali magic. It’s a career that shouldn’t be happening. Herath played in Murali’s last Test, making his highest score of 80 not out and batting with Murali when the declaration came. He was left out for the next, returned mid-series against West Indies in November 2010. He was nearly 33 years old.
In less than six years since, he’s taken 261 wickets. He’s played 51 Test matches out of his team’s 55. In 2010 he didn’t have a career, in 2012 he had the most Test wickets in the world. He repeated that in 2014, as well as bowling Sri Lanka towards the World Twenty20 title: his bewitching 5-3 against New Zealand to defend 119 is one of the format’s finest performances.
Colombo will be as defining for his Test career. An unqualified defeat of Australia is something even Murali could never manage. Of course this Australian side is weaker, but thrashing one of cricket’s powerful nations still matters. We knew that Herath was good, now comes a realisation that his career could be great. Like Mike Hussey, his Test contribution is no longer an addendum. It has transcended its late start to achieve true substance.
Herath has 332 Test wickets, 23rd on the all-time list. In this series he passed Fred Trueman, Lance Gibbs, Brett Lee, Zaheer Khan, Mitchell Johnson, Bob Willis, and the opposition’s bowling coach Allan Donald. Next up, 23 wickets ahead, lie Dennis Lillee and a certain Chaminda Vaas. Close that gap and Herath would be Sri Lanka’s second-most prolific bowler. I don’t need to tell you who’s first.
Twinned again. The small matter of 450 wickets between them, but one and two on the list would still be apt. Herath’s career cannot be appraised without its relation to Murali: the shadow that he lived in and the shadow he emerged from. But whitewash brings reflected light. In the 2004 version, Herath played a bit part behind the star. This year, as the wash got whiter, brightness narrowed to a spotlight. By the final day, Herath had centre stage.
