16-Dec-2008It is not too difficult to see why, if Sanath Jayasuriya had notbeen a cricketer, he would have been an accomplished fencer, sal-lying forth towards his opponent, as he does when he dances downthe wicket, with nimbleness of foot and alertness of eye. You canvisualise the epee twirling dexterously in his quick hands andsense the swordsman`s acceptance of having his life hang by astring. The qualities of skill and daring form a rare combina-tion, perhaps suited more to a gambler than a top order batsmanand yet, to see Jayasuriya bat is to see a finely crafted gamblerat work, sensing an opportunity and thriving on it.Over the last 16 months, Jayasuriya has made the leap that somany cricketers aspire to but rarely can; from being an excitingscene-stealer to playing the lead role. You could sense somethingwas going to happen when he walked out but you could be surethere would be just a few flashes of lightning. The promise ofa storm without the dense cloud to back it.Though he was talked about as a one-day specialist then, he onlyhad a batting average of about 13 and certainly didn`t haveenough wickets to justify his presence as a bowler even though heheld the best bowling figures by a Sri Lankan in one-day cricket.It was tempting to label Jayasuriya as someone who could neitherbat nor bowl well enough. Or at any rate, consistently enough.Unlike men of destiny who make their future, Jayasuriya seemed towait for fortune to stop by. As any sportsman will tell you, itonly happens rarely, and crucial years of youth passed by, takingaway opportunity and a fair chunk of hair. Then suddenly, thewheel of fortune stopped alongside him. At Bloemfontein, theheart of rightwing Afrikaner territory, Jayasuriya first rode thecrest of a new revolution. Opening the batting against New Zea-land, he scored 140, his first limited overs century. It alsomade him the record-holder for the highest individual score inone-day internationals by a Sri Lankan and while that didn`t makehim a great batsman overnight, it meant that he was up above suchoutstanding talents as Roy Dias and Aravinda de Silva. A wandererin search of home had found it; at the top of the order.In the next few months, Jayasuriya waded into opposition attacksnot with the fluency of the swordsman but with the bluntness of abattle tank. The guns boomed for a while but he was also an easytarget and the opposition waited for him to shoot himself. In-variably he did. Until the tour of Australia late last year. Onthe bouncy tracks that had exposed so many before him. Jayasuriyadiscovered that he loved the ball coming onto him. Better still,he relished the challenge of aggressive cricketers and hostileofficials and his century in the last Test at Perth was a wonder-ful innings studded with bold shots and marked by a refreshingabsence of orthodoxy.Too often, batsmen tend to be predictable, playing a ball as themanual suggests. Bowlers don`t mind bowling to such batsmen be-cause they can work out the best way to attack them. But herewas a batsman who believed strokes were meant to be playedeven in the Test match theatre and who was just as much at homedriving through cover on the rise as he was pulling in front ofsquare. He had begun to like fast bowlers and they had starteddiscover- ing a distaste for him. Subtly, quite unlike themanner in which he plays his cricket, the balance was tilting.And then came the World Cup. And Delhi. Jayasuriya made 79 from76 balls, a pedestrian pace by recent standards but his partner-ship with Kaluwitharna had redefined the way the early overswould be played in one-day cricket. Ironically, their battingaverages only added up to around 35, the figure you would want agood top order batsman to have.With batting records falling like rain in a Bombay monsoon,Jayasuriya took on England, a side whose defeats bring a totallyinexplicable but perverse joy to most cricket-playing countries.His 82 from 43 balls brought him instant international attentionfor he was now playing innings that were long enough to winmatches on their own. And then came the crucial spell in Calcuttathat destroyed India and showed up the Eden Gardens as justanother fair weather crowd. That was one of the outstandingbowl- ing performances of the tournament because he bowled theperfect line on a helpful wicket: the sign of a shrewd, think-ing crick- eter.The World Cup made him a star but there were many including me,who remained a bit sceptical of the Player of the Tournamentaward. Did he have the substance, one wondered, to win it aheadof Tendulkar or Waugh ? Did he have the statesmanship to play thekind of innings Mark Waugh played at Madras: surely one of thegreat innings of limited overs cricket ? Did he evoke the sameawe as those two ?If the end of the World Cup, a stunning success for him, stillevoked an uncertain response, the picturesque Padang in Singaporeprovided convincing proof. A century from 48 balls against one ofthe best attacks in the world had to be something special, ir-respective of the length of the boundary. The world recordhad gone by 14 balls; a bit like a young upstart coming up anddoing seven metres against Sergei Bubka.Jayasuriya is now writing a new chapter in the short history ofthe one-day game because he is perfecting a style that is radi-cally different from anything that has come before; a lot morerevolutionary than Martin Crowe`s use of Dipak Patel with the newball in the 1992 World Cup. There is now a new grammar to cricketfor underneath this carnage lies a definite pattern.Even as the fastest 50 appears in the record books what is mostawesome is not the power behind the shots but the sense of pred-ictability around the obvious danger of his approach. That is be-cause he picks his spot to hit, sees the ball very early and hasthe divine ability to find spaces rather than fielders.As he drives his Audi down past Galle on the road to Matara,Jayasuriya will be aware, being a shrewd cricketer, that cricket-ing brains around the world will be working on how to stop him.At 26, that is a great reputation to have.If I was Jayasuriya, I`d turn the music on and watch the beauti-ful palms of Sri Lanka.Source :: Daily News (http.//www.lanka.net)