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Can England negate the Murali factor?

By Ted Corbett

GALLE Dec. 1. Lets talk about torque. Not the Persian jewellery that eventually became Roman soldiers' medals, but the buzz word for the amount of life force that Muttiah Muralitharan imparts on the ball.

It will be a huge factor when the first Test between Sri Lanka and England begins on Tuesday on a pitch that is expected to give this world-class off-spinner the sort of encouragement that has brought him 60 wickets in eight Tests on its surface.

Never has a devil's brew been so successfully created for an impish sportsman as that contained in the pitch at the Galle International Stadium. Not surprisingly, the curator is one Jayanada Warnaweera, the former Sri Lankan off-spinner with an action as unique as Murali's.

The result has been that Sri Lanka has won seven of the last nine Tests at the ground with its imposing Dutch fort in the background. Even Sri Lankan bookmakers are not taking bets on this match.

It is all about torque which is, according to the encyclopaedia, "equal to the magnitude of the component of the force vector lying in the plane perpendicular to the axis, multiplied by the shortest distance between the axis and the direction of the force component."

But we are simple sportsfolk, right, so lets see how it is that Murali is capable of causing fear through to terror among the England batsmen.

Until a couple of years ago, it was common for the bird-brained among the cricket fraternity to say he threw. Australian umpires made names for themselves by shouting their opinions from square leg and the England coach David Lloyd spent a whole Test match raising queries about Murali's action while the spinner collected 16 wickets.

Now Australians have conceded that he is simply a great bowler and Lloyd, the commentator, speaks of him in glowing terms.

The Murali right arm still has a natural deformity which enables his wrist twist to impart levels of torque unknown to other bowlers. It has allowed him to gather 459 victims in 82 Tests at 23.55 with power left to reach 650.

This week he has announced that he has a special ball for each England batsman. He does not say whether that is a different ball for each; or just his plain, honest, tossed-up-in-the-air off break; or his hard-to-spot leg break, or his slower ball, his quicker ball or some other monstrous variation.

He does not go so far as Shane Warne and add an exotic name like zooter to his many deliveries. Why should he? If you have torque, and a grin which seems to spread across his face whether he has bowled a batsman or been hit for six, names do not matter.

Murali claims that England has an answer. Graham Thorpe is back in the side, with a century at the Oval in what he calls his finest Test innings. If he only plays as well in Sri Lanka as he did two years ago, England may win the series again. But Thorpe often begins badly and I wonder if he can make runs immediately. Still it is good to see him relaxed, with a new girl on his arm after so many troubles and to wonder if, aged 34, he still has a few years left in his international life.

All this talk may, of course, be so much rubbish. As I write, 15 kilometres down the coast in Hikkaduwa, a holiday town full of Barmy Army fans, lightning flashes across the sky, clouds gather on all quarters and the crows collect high in the trees, a sure sign of stormy weather according to the local experts.

If England holds its resolve the two-man selection committee - coach Duncan Fletcher and Michael Vaughan, the captain - will include three spinners but it seemed to be edging away from that plan on Monday.

Instead England may use Rikki Clarke as assistant all-rounder to Andrew Flintoff, a sure sign that the torque of the town has penetrated its mind and that it will try to battle its way through the Murali maze rather than using his pitch to create victory for itself.

The teams (from): Sri Lanka: Marvan Atapattu, Sanath Jayasuriya, Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayawardene, Hashan Tillekeratne, Romesh Kaluwitharana, Kumar Dharmasena, Chaminda Vaas, Dinusha Fernando, Muttiah Muralitharan, Upul Chandana, Thilan Samaraweera.

England: Michael Vaughan, captain, Marcus Trescothick, Mark Butcher, Nasser Hussain, Graham Thorpe, Andrew Flintoff, Rikki Clarke, Chris Read, Robert Croft, Gareth Batty, Ashley Giles, Richard Johnson.

Umpires: Srinivas Venkataraghavan (India) and Daryl Harper (Australia). TV umpire: Gamini Silva. Match referee: Clive Lloyd (West Indies).

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