The first day of the annual Sharjah tournament was a yawn. Upsets there may be in the shorter version of the game, but nobody seriously expected Zimbabwe to get the better of Sri Lanka, not on a slow wicket like this. The World Cup champs duly won the match by seven wickets with 26 balls to spare; Aravinda de Silva got to 6,000 runs in one-dayers and joined eight others who have done likewise. Overhauling a total of 187 for nine posed no problem for the Lankans, not after Jayasuriya made 56 and the Marvan Atapattu 52 not out to add to de Silva's 60.
But the one incident which should have raised some comment appeared to have gone unnoticed. It happened during the 29th over of the Zimbabwe innings which was bowled by Muthiah Muralitharan. Umpire Steve Dunn no-balled him once, nothing unusual for he is known to overstep at times. But when the TV replay was shown, Ian Chappell was quick to notice that Murali's foot had not gone over the line. The ball was legal from that standpoint. Why then was the no-ball given? As of this writing, nothing is clear.
Muralitharan has been called for throwing in 1995-96 during a tour of Australia. He and Kumar Dharmasena are reportedly on an ICC watchlist; the ICC had reportedly asked the umpires officiating during the Lankan tour of New Zealand to keep a careful eye on the pair. Lankan officials had denied this at the time when newspapers reported it and nothing untoward was heard of during the New Zealand tour which ended in disaster for the Lankans.
But back to the match. Lanka had better batting conditions as the wicket had lost whatever dew it had by mid-morning and was easier to bat on in the afternoon. Ranatunge put Zimbabwe in as any captain would. Vaas and later Muralitharan kept the Zimbabwe batsmen quiet and with Sri Lanka fielding well, Zimbabwe scored at a very slow rate. They lost two batsmen to run outs, one of them being the well-set Craig Wishart who was third to go when he was beginning to look good.
Lanka had just the opening hiccup when they lost Kaluwitharane for a duck. Jayasuriya hit nine fours and a six and though he fell in the 22nd over with the score at 80, de Silva and Atapattu ensured the scores were level before the former made his exit. Atapattu laboured for his runs initially, getting to six off 56 balls. He looked anything but a competent replacement for the burly Asanka Gurusinghe who has been dropped in controversial circumstances.
The Sharjah tournaments have, unfortunately, always been built around Indo-Pakistan rivalry. Pakistan is the third team in this tournament and this, no doubt, will ensure some interest among their supporters; but the general level of interest is low. It is unfortunate that just one aspect of the tournament had been stressed right through but this is something which began in 1981 itself. It is too late to try and reorient things. In the past when the international calendar was not as tight as it is now, teams could be attracted to Sharjah. That is no longer the case. Sharjah is slowly becoming the poor cousin to other venues.
The organisers, no doubt, hope that Sri Lanka and Pakistan can make up for some of the artificial excitement generated by an India-Pakistan clash. That will never be the case. The bid to generate interest by laying emphasis on things other than cricket may have paid dividends in the short term but now the tournament is widely seen as just going through the motions.
Sri Lanka may be the one-day champs but they are not yet taken seriously in Test cricket and thus have the time to play in Sharjah. Pakistan, it seems, have some kind of understanding that they will take part whenever needed. The third team is generally one of the minnows which can occasionally pull off an upset but which is there to make up the numbers, more often than not. Sharjah badly needs to reinvent itself else it stands the risk of becoming irrelevant.