The Legend of Pradeep Mathew Read Online Free

moist, the ball whizzes through. If it is wet or bone dry, the ball will spin. The pitch serves as a scapegoat for many failures, though it is seldom referred to by those celebrating success.
The Articles
    Inspired by napkins and wedding punch-ups, I decide to write short articles on the ten greatest Sri Lankan cricketers of all time. I will not tell you who are on my list. I am already sick to death of lists.

    At the risk of sounding like Renga, I will say that the articles are the best things I have written in forty-one years of wielding a pen. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, the Observer refuses to publish them.
    The Observer and I have a history. I was there from ’58 to ’71, winning Ceylon Sportswriter of the Year in 1969. I left to find my way in the world. I then lost my way in the world, and returned a prodigal in ’91. In between I had won a few more awards, done a stint in radio, been sacked twice from reputed newspapers and acquired a reputation as a belligerent drunk.
    I’m not sure why the editor of the Observer despised me. It could have been my debonair, devil-may-care swagger. Or it could be the fact that I spilled brandy on his wife at a Christmas party in ’79. He could not sack me before I was pensionable, for fear of labour courts. So, sadist that he was, he kept me away from the sports pages and put me on parliament duty, the role of a glorified stenographer.
    He refuses to publish my articles, claiming, maliciously, that they are poorly written. The Weekend doesn’t think so. They publish three before going bankrupt. Or more specifically, before going bankrupt due to their printing presses being set on fire by men with gold jewellery and cans of petrol a week after publishing a story involving the government and an address that was too accurate for its own good.
    Kreeda, a magazine I helped start, publishes all ten, but has the circulation of an illustrated porn rag. Palitha Epasekera agrees to translate the articles for Ravaya, but that never happens. But then in ’95, over a year after they are written, Sportstar say they are interested in three: Aravinda, Sathasivam and Mathew. Sportstar pays handsomely, which is just as well, because the Observer is in the process of terminating my employment for freelancing for other publications.
    This too is just as well. I am tired of sitting in parliament, watching fat men braying like mules and squabbling like infants. I send a letter to the company accountant on 26 April, the day of my birth, informing him of my recent elevation to the age of pensionability. I now never have to work or worry about drink money ever again. There are some perks of ageing.
    There are also some perks of working forty-one years in journalism. Free buffets, free booze, free hotel rooms, free invites to functions, free tickets to matches. In exchange for no pay, no respect, and the very real possibility of being bludgeoned to death by a government-sponsored thug.
    Cheerio to the lot of you. You will not be missed.
Sales Pitch
    If you’ve never seen a cricket match; if you have and it has made you snore; if you can’t understand why anyone would watch, let alone obsess over this dull game, then this is the book for you.
Definitely
    Ari Byrd is my next-door neighbour. He teaches maths at Science College in Mount Lavinia and lectures at the University of Moratuwa. He calls himself a fixer of gadgets, but I would describe him as more of a breaker. His front room and his garage are littered with carcasses of video players, walkmans, spool machines and Polaroid cameras. He buys these gadgets through the Sunday Observer classifieds, obsolete technology with broken parts at a cut price.
    ‘Wije, God has given you a gift that you are wasting,’ he says. ‘You must write a book.’
    This was many years before the stomach pains.
    ‘Yes. Yes,’ I reply. ‘One day, the stories I will tell… Definitely.’
    Promises uttered by Sri Lankans ending in the word definitely