A Sri Lankan in Lahore: remembering that life-changing night in 1996

Posted by author March 3, 2025 Cricket

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It was my first time at the scene of Sri Lanka’s finest national moments, not just one of Sri Lanka’s great cricketing moments. This one cuts across genre, race, class, caste, recency of arrival on the island, and even proximity to established political elites (one of the out groups right now). Sri Lankans fight about plenty, but we are pretty uniformly agreed on this: the 1996 World Cup final was one of the most incredible nights in the history of our nation.

It has cast it shadow on politics, diplomacy, economy, livelihoods… If Sri Lanka had not won the 1996 World Cup, would I ever have had a career in cricket journalism?

There are other moments I am desperate to bring to mind, as I sit in the press box in Lahore, watching Australia play Afghanistan, bringing that epic 1996 night alive in between balls. I think about Muthiah Muralidaran dashing out to embrace his captain, Arjuna Ranatunga. Murali was uninterested in plucking stumps out of the ground as others were doing, and just wanted a piece of Arjuna. That Murali-Arjuna hug is one of my favourite Sri Lankan cricketing moments, for what it meant at the time, which a piece I wrote a few years ago touches on.

The thought occurs to me that although in 1996, Murali was the skinny bowler wrapping his arms around cricket’s Pudgemaster General, nowadays Arjuna has slimmed down to Murali 1996 levels following a gastric bypass, while Murali’s middle-aged body has colonised its surrounds almost as emphatically as Arjuna’s once did. The physics of the hug would be the same; the roles are switched.

I was seven when that embrace happened, and I’m 36 now, and Sri Lanka has been through plenty since then – wars, economic crises, political ructions. There are few parts of Sri Lankan life that have been untouched by that night in Lahore, and no moment at the venue during which I am not deeply aware that I am not watching Sri Lanka at this Champions Trophy. As with much of Sri Lankan cricket, I am conflicted as to how I should feel.

The obvious emotion would be sadness. But then reaching rock bottom also prompted long-awaited changes, both in broader Sri Lankan society (which cricket almost always interacts with), and in cricket itself. There is a bit of a white-ball resurgence – at home at least – under captain Charith Asalanka. Because of the way Sri Lanka’s cricket administration has been, in essence, an extension of the country’s politics, the news in December about sweeping reforms, more than any win on the field, gives me hope that Sri Lanka can rebound.

But in the Lahore press box, it is impossible to feel sad for long. I have one visualisation that will never fail to buoy my drooping Sri Lankan-ness. At this venue, I have Aravinda looking out from under the visor of that grill-less helmet, and those glimmering mongoose eyes.