Sports: Reigning Champions Sri Lanka; The Last Dance

With Ranatunga ageing and senior players out of form, it will take double the effort for Sri Lanka to win this time.

Over breakfast in Pune, he's being good. Just two bowls of cornflakes. Still he carries with him a worthy belly, a generous reminder that in cricket the athlete has not completely conquered the thinker. Grey hair sneaks out over the top of his T-shirt, and he has the look of a weary drinker who's spent too much time on bar stools. He, Arjuna Ranatunga, king of the world?

It's a morning when good manners have to be set aside. It is a good thing is breakfast is meagre, because you're about to ruin it. Pick up a paper with statistics printed on it and read them out. "Fourteen matches played this year,10 matches lost." There's no need to say it, the inference is obvious. This is the biodata of world chumps.

His spoon settles in mid-flight and he says, "I am not panicked." With any other man, that's worth a laugh. Not him, not this captain who brought to the field the serenity of a monk and the ruthless cunning of a takeover tycoon.

Sport survives on drama, on small men who look into mirrors and decide they are David reborn. In 1996, from a country unsettled by civil war, famous for not too much, a pot-bellied Buddhist arrived to fashion a miracle. What breed of men was this? On the morning of their day-night final in Lahore they were busy visiting a carpet exhibition! It was a win important for Sri Lanka. Says Saa'di Tawfeeq, cricket writer with Colombo's The Daily News: "Forget cricket, it helped the business industry. This was their passport to opening doors."

It was important for cricket too. To paraphrase what the New York Times columnist Robert Lipsyte wrote about another sport, "Such words as 'courage', 'tragedy' and 'heroism' should never be applied to yuppies trying to stick more billboards on their bats or shoes or shirts. Somewhere under all that gear may be a heart but it's hard to tell." In a cricket world where profit is the priority, a team of romantics had made a compelling point.

But like a marriage whose freshness has passed, this affair too has wilted. As the World Cup approaches, there is a despairing vulnerability about this team, lions too old to hunt. This team, which Ranatunga says, "ate up half-chances in 1996" can't catch a cold these days. This team, which he says, won in 1996 "because six to seven guys played well together" can't find a single soldier to step forward, so bad that in the 14 matches this year they've scored just two centuries, both by Mahela Jayawardene. Their virtues were batting and fielding, virtues eroding under the onslaught of time. In 1997 their success percentage was 71.43 (played 28, won 19) , in 1998 it dipped to 47.83 ( played 23, won 11) and this year it's settled at a disturbingly low 28.57 (played 14, won 4). It is the best news for India. Sri Lanka sits besides them in Group A -- alongside the tough South Africans, the sturdy English and the unpredictable Zimbabweans -- and any weakness is welcome.

For all his deep-freeze demeanour, it hurts Ranatunga because above all he is a proud man. Some things he understands. "In 1996 we were 10 per cent better than the rest, but we've got stuck there and the other teams have come up, even got better than us."

They were, in some desperate irony, doomed too by their own brilliance, undone by their shining form. After the 1996 World Cup, other countries began to discard tired, trusted men for vibrant, untried ones: Australia let go Ian Healy for Adam Gilchrist and set Mark Taylor aside, India wooed Saurav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, South Africa pushed Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher. But Sri Lanka won every cup they were invited to and, says Ranatunga, "We were doing so well, how could we chuck anyone out?"

But like some insidious virus, age eats into talent, nibbling away till speed diminishes, coordination begins to die, all so minutely that at first you believe it is but imagination. It is not. Ranatunga is 35, Aravinda De Silva 33, Hashan Tillekaratne 31, Romesh Kaluwitharana and Sanath Jayasuriya 29. Joints are rusting, muscles asked to do a labour they cannot, the pain of over-playing setting in. Jayasuriya broke an arm, De Silva got hurt, Muthiah Muralitharan needed a rest, so did Kaluwitharana, and right through 1999 they have not played with a complete team. He sighs, "We had a whole set of players not doing well at the same time."

It is hard to take men who have travelled long with you, from anonymity to glory, and knock on their doors and say, "I'm sorry, your journey is over." It is hard too to take young men, prancing at the sidelines and teach them in no time how hard international cricket is. They are left with a team, one half too old, another too young and none at their peak. Coach Duleep Mendis does not agree, saying, "Batsmen haven't passed their peak, it's just that bowlers have studied them better." Yet, he adds, "We have not reached the standard we want, and there is little time to study what went wrong."

Ranatunga was stung most by a loss to Zimbabwe in Sharjah late last year. As manager Ranjit Fernando says, "The drive seemed to have gone," and the captain gathered his team to tell them that. "I had a long chat with them. I said we don't seem to have the killer instinct, that we didn't seem keen to win, just playing and going back home. I told them that's not my way. I play to win." And then he said something else which hints at the unrest within his team, while revealing his gifts as a leader. "I also said I don't want to lead a team of stars, players who think that if they've got a hundred or taken five wickets they're heroes. And I told the young players about pride."

Pride is what drives him, the fundamental fuel of his existence: a rotund brown man from an island insignificant to the world unafraid of announcing his presence. It is why he stood up for Muralitharan in Australia, berated the umpire and interrupted the match. "I don't know what it is in Australia but it's not the proper way to play cricket. I don't like being pushed and I've been pushed hard for many years." He won't say it, but his manner suggests he believes a bias lingers in the halls and fields of cricket. At one, so far unreported, moment during that tour Adam Hollioake passed at him a comment so desperately foul and vulgar that even he, a hardened professional, blanched. "It was the worst thing ever said to me. It shows the quality of the man and how he was brought up."

It is all relevant because when he travels to England, Ranatunga will have some scores to settle. He will do it subtly too, as he did prior to the last World Cup final when he declared to the world press that "Shane Warne is overrated". Psychology in itself will be insufficient and he knows it: "We can win but it will take double the effort."

So a proactive team prepares, and one slip of the tongue by Mendis reveals the possible heart of their strategy. Discussing how one-day cricket first pivoted on the last 10 overs, and then on the first 15 overs (a Lankan invention), he says, "Maybe now the middle overs will be crucial since you can't hit easily over the top, so maybe we'll drop one of our openers down the order." Jayasuriya at one down, Marvan Attapatu as opener? Ah, says Mendis with a grinning shake of the head, "I've told you too much already."

Despite their form there is so much still about Sri Lanka that appeals, at least to the romantic. They brought an elusive joy to the cricketing world, the freshness of a single rose blooming in a swamp of sameness. For that reason alone it would be tragic to see them collapse with the world in attendance.

In the team bus, the truth of his feeling obscured behind his sunglasses, Ranatunga makes one final fling at bravado. "I like it," he says, trying not to smile. "It's good people are writing us off. It takes the pressure off me, and it makes us underdogs again."

He is trying to tell you the cup has not begun yet, and he is still Arjuna Ranatunga, king of the world. The lion prepares for one last hunt.

Master Strokes
Most matches are won by imaginative leadership. It is the refusal to accept defeat that sets great captains apart.

Team Man: Cronje is unflappable and has the ability to rally his players around him.

A captain must pursue victory with every means at his disposal. It is no use sitting in the dressing room with a glum face or complaining as Archie MacLaren, the old England captain, once did, "Good grief, look what they've sent me this time." Even if his team is outgunned, a captain must still search for an opening which has a chance, and then he must go for it.

It is a captain's task to find hope among the ruins, as Mark Taylor did during the 1996 World Cup semi-final in Chandigarh. With the Australians apparently beaten, he threw the ball to Stuart Law and asked him to bowl, not his occasional medium-pacers but some leg breaks he had tried in the nets. It was a masterstroke. Although Law's two overs cost 12 runs, the Australians were rejuvenated. They could see their captain was still on the bridge, that he had not given up. West Indies duly went to pieces, losing the match by five runs.

Above all a captain must be himself. Brian Close, the rugged Yorkshireman from the '60s, used to curse his way through the day, whereas West Indian Frank Worrell was so calm and collected that when Wes Hall prepared to deliver the last over of the famous Tied Test against Australia in 1960 he merely advised him not to "bowl any no balls". Upon his appointment as captain, Steve Waugh took each player aside and told him of his expectations.

There is no blueprint. Richie Benaud was an enthusiast, Arjuna Ranatunga is a schemer, Mike Brearley was thoughtful, Hansie Cronje is imperturbable. But they are all steadfast in the heat of battle and the players have faith in them. And they are all fighters. With his team in trouble in the West Indies and silent in their room, Ian Chappell rose and barked, "I haven't come all this way to lose." His team woke up and took the series. It is this refusal to accept defeat that sets great captains apart.

No captain can be certain of winning. After all chance plays its part in cricket. A captain can shave the odds, that is all. The old adage "time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted" applies. Before the 1996 World Cup final in Lahore lots of people went to inspect the ground. Ranatunga went alone at dusk because he wanted to see how heavily the dew lay upon the ground. It was thick and he decided to bowl first as the ball was bound to be slippery by nightfall. The rest is history.

Research is also important, often the secret lies in the detail. A captain must do his homework. He can study previous scores at the ground and opposing players. In Australia the state teams study charts and films of opposing players, every ball of every match is recorded on a computer. Accordingly the Victorian team were able to contain Michael Bevan in one final. It was a matter of precise field placements. Bevan still scored 64 but he had to work hard and his team was beaten.

A captain is a chess player and a leader. He must gather the right men around him, players willing to take responsibility and relishing a challenge. After all cricket is played with the heart as well as the head.

A captain committed to winning could remind his players of a message written on a wall in a Jamaican boxing gym. "Every fight is a self-portrait, autograph your work with excellence."

-- Peter Roebuck