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by Sa'adi Thawfeeq

Relationship between Sri Lanka and Australia had always been cordial until Boxing Day of 1995 when off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan was called for chucking by Australian umpire Darrel Hair in front of a full house at Melbourne Cricket Ground.

That tour was marred by several onfield incidents between players of both sides and in one instant the Sri Lanka team even refused to shake hands with the Australians after a World Series Cup final match.

The treatment meted out to Sri Lanka on that tour made them a tough proposition both mentally and physically. A few months later, they went on to beat Australia quite handsomely to win the World Cup.

The Melbourne incident flared off a confronation between the players and in the ensuing years a contest at any level by the two countries have always aroused interest among spectators and cricket followers over the world. A repetition of the incident four years later at Adelaide by one of Hair's Australian colleagues Ross Emerson nearly brought the World Series Cup match against England to standstill when the then Sri Lanka captain Arjuna Ranatunga took his team onto the edge of the field.

Ranatunga not one to duck a confrontation fought on behalf of his champion spinner Muralitharan which ensured a finger wagging argument with Emerson.

Australia has been the only country which found something wrong with the bowling action of Muralitharan and the hostile manner in which he was treated has forced the bowler to think twice before touring that country again in the future.

Several tapes and biomechanical evidence provided by the Sri Lanka Cricket Board to the International Cricket Council (ICC) eventually cleared the bowler from his unusual action, but the Aussies were still not convinced.Several statements relating to Muralitharan and Ranatunga have been published time and again. Australian Test captain Steve Waugh once wrote that Muralitharan's achievements as a bowler cannot be recognised world wide because his action was not clean.

Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne, a contemporary of Muralitharan and vying with him to become the leading bowler in Test cricket as they both approach West Indian Courtney Walsh's world Test record of 519 wickets, once attacked Ranatunga in an English newspaper saying the Sri Lanka team would be better off without him. Warne is also known to show his dislike to tour Sri Lanka being at the head of a campaign as Australia refused to play their 1996 World Cup match in Colombo and again held reservations of making a Test tour here in 1999.

The hostile reception Warne is receiving in the current ICC Champions trophy in Colombo could be attributed to these past incidents which the spectators have not forgotten.

Hair after nearly ending Muralitharan's international career went one step further to make a statement that the bowler had a 'diabolical action' and that he would not hesitate to call him again in his book 'The Decision Maker'. Both he and Warne were severely reprimanded by the Australian Cricket Board for their unwarranted statements. These and other incidents have made Australia the team Sri Lanka loves to hate. Australia's snub of Sri Lanka in the 1996 World Cup was answered sweetly in the final at Lahore, when Sri Lanka turned tables on the favourites in front of a partisan crowd that supported Sri Lanka to the hilt to lift the World Cup.

Revenge had never been any sweeter.

Although relationship between the two countries has simmered to some extent following the retirement of Ranatunga, who was the most hated cricketer in Australia, it has not extinguished the dying embers in totality.

The spark could be set off at any moment, although Ranatunga's successor Sanath Jayasuriya is a totally different kettle of fish.

The Aussies hated Ranatunga, a rebel with a cause not for anything but because he was prepared to take them on one to one, which no other opposing captain had done before.

He refused to give in to the Australian tactics of bullying his team and fought eye ball to eye ball with not only the Australian umpires but also with players like Ian Healy, Shane Warne and co. Despite the sullied relationship that exists among the players, the Cricket Board's of the two countries enjoy a splendid relationship.

The ACB has been helpful to Sri Lanka in many ways in the past helping to promote their cause for Test status in the early eighties.

It was largely on the report submitted by Fred Bennett, the Australian manager of the team that toured Sri Lanka in 1981 that the country was finally admitted to become a full member of the ICC in July 1981.Even after Test status, Australia kept its strong relationship going by inviting Sri Lanka to play in their World Series Cup tournaments and giving them Test matches at a time when the environment in the country was not conducive to hold international matches for a period of five years from 1987.

It was Australia who finally ended Sri Lanka's drought of home Tests by sending their full side for the first-ever three Test series between the two countries in 1992 under Allan Border.Sri Lanka lost a Test they should have won by 16 runs at the SSC which eventually turned out to be the decisive one because the other two ended in draws.

The tour was followed by another seven years later by Steve Waugh's team which was defeated 1-0 in the three-Test series and also lost the three-nation Aiwa Cup one-day final to Sri Lanka.

The Aussies know that when they take the field today in the second semi-final against Sri Lanka they are in for a hostile reception from the 35,000 odd spectators. It is a situation which they themselves have created and no one can be blamed for that.   [Back]

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