Arjuna Ranatunga.
Credit: Special Arrangement
On a hot summer night in Lahore in 1996, a ragtag bunch of cricketers sucked the gravity out of the Gaddafi stadium with a heist in plain sight, and a wonderful sight it was. Twenty-seven years later, it’s still inconceivable that Sri Lanka did in fact beat Australia to claim a World Cup.
Even the man who orchestrated the said win pauses for a moment or two when talking about the day the cricketing world as we knew shifted on its axis. Arjuna Ranatunga to this day is aware of the magnitude of the moment, but he speaks of it as if he wasn’t there.
As if, he - like the rest of the world - has moved on in pursuit of a better future rather than revisiting a magical past. And so, he drones on about corruption and what administrators need to do to save cricket, but there are moments when images from that night come back.
After all, one can’t forget the greatest night in Sri Lankan cricket, maybe the country’s too.
“We had been planning for that for two-three years,” says a vastly unrecognisable Ranatunga. “We identified who would play and so on based on the conditions in Asia. We also picked players who would give it 100 percent. If you take the 96 side, barring Aravinda (de Silva), everyone was good but not that good, but everyone was committed. They were keen on winning as a team, not after individual success.”
“Aravinda was on another level. You can’t compare him to anyone, even now. He’s a different class, but everyone else was doing just enough. They played roles, he was toying with class,” Ranatunga adds.
Ranatunga then went on to describe how the win was achieved when they didn’t have the developed skillsets which some of the later teams did have. “We had the five senior guys and without them, it would have been a disaster. We had the right balance. Talent-wise, I think there have been teams which came after which were better, but they didn’t account for the future,” he explains.
“As a team, you shouldn’t only be concerned about winning and losing the next game, it’s about looking at tomorrow and that way you’re ready for something big, like a World Cup.”
Essentially, and Ranatunga makes it a point to reiterate this several times over, Aravinda was the difference Sri Lanka desperately needed to stage the greatest of coups. In the final, he came up with an invaluable 107, unbeaten no less, and added 97 runs for the fifth wicket with Ranatunga.
“Aravinda will get into any World XI side with his eyes closed. Because he is the most talented batter this produced in this country by far. For me, the next guy is Roy Das. Then you have Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardena and Jayasuriya, but there's a huge gap for me because I had the opportunity to bat on the other side,” he gushes. “I saw him, saw Aravinda, not from 80 yards. Mainly I saw him from 30 yards away, so I know the talent.”
Another piece of a puzzle which the world didn’t know had to fix was top-order acceleration. In that sense, openers Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana ripped the ancient fabric of consolidate first, accelerate later, and turned it upside down, paving the for a future where acceleration and strike rate trumps safety.
“I think we are the ones who created T20 cricket in the 96 World Cup (smiles). Sanath and Kallu started it. Again, if someone like Aravinda or Roy Das played in this era, they would have been very successful because they had the technique. They didn’t slog the ball. You don’t need to slog to be successful. You need to learn technique and then add power,” he offers.
“I’m afraid for the next generation. They think batting is about slogging. It’s dangerous. Sanath and Kallu were not sloggers, they were given permission to attack, big difference.”