TestMatch
U19 Cricketer
A very good article:
Fly Lara fly | The Cricket Monthly | ESPN Cricinfo
Fly Lara fly | The Cricket Monthly | ESPN Cricinfo
In the first Test in Galle, Sarwan has no idea which direction Murali's deliveries are going to spin. He mentions this mid-pitch to his partner, Brian Lara. Lara tells him he isn't picking Murali either. "What you gonna do, boss?" Sarwan asks. "He says, 'Well, I'm going to try and sweep my way to a hundred.'" He adds, "'Before the series is out I will be pickin' him and hittin' him wherever I want.'"
In Galle, Sarwan watches a Lara 178 unfold without the batsman knowing which way the ball is going to turn. "Astonishing" is the word he uses.
In the second Test in Kandy, he sees that Lara has understood how it's coming out of Murali's hand, "because he was demonstrating to us how we can pick him. He was already using his feet and hitting him through midwicket and stuff like that".
By the third Test in Colombo the code is cracked. "They had long-off, long-on, and he was still using his feet and hitting those balls between long-on and long-off. Basically, he was hitting him wherever he want, just like he mentioned to me in the first Test match."
Perversely, he was using Murali's accuracy, his consistency, against him. "Ninety percent of the time if Murali want to put a ball on a 25-cent he will be able to put it there. Because he was so confident of Murali bowling in one area so consistently, he was going to use his feet and pick him off."
The code, though, I'm interested in the code. How was he picking him? What was the code? "He would pick him from his wrist. Obviously with Muralitharan, the topspinners with the offspinners, the rotation is the same, it's travelling in one direction. He said he was picking him up from the wrist, but obviously not everyone is as gifted as him."
In Port-of-Spain v Australia in 2003, close to a long-awaited first century on home soil, in the heat of a torrid Brett Lee spell - the fastest Sarwan has ever encountered - Lara gets fed up of turning himself into an inverted airborne "C" against Lee's bouncers, looks around the field and tells his partner: "Listen, I'm going to hit him in front of square. When they move the fielder in front of square, I'm going to hit him a little more in front of square. And then I'm going to hit him behind square." Watch him here fulfil part of the plan ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6KefD-Db-U&t=17m35s ) . On 99 he fancies the spinner. "Get me on strike, I need to be on strike now!" First ball he duly takes a boundary and the century.
The 153 not out was before Sarwan's West Indies debut. But he recalls Lara saying something about it, "when I got to know him enough to ask questions". "That innings he calculated that you need to hit X amount of fours - I think he had worked out that he needed 18 or 20 boundaries to win the game." Sarwan is in Guyana, I am in India and we are both laughing on the line and I think we are both shaking our heads. Afterwards I look up the numbers on the scorecard. BC Lara, 4s 19, 6s 1.