by Rex Clementine  

The Boxing Day Test match has become an integral part of the game of cricket as during the festive season people are hooked onto their televisions from morning to evening watching the proceedings at MCG before switching their channel to find out what’s happening at Centurion.

The Boxing Day Tests are well attended too. Most people are on leave in the week between Christmas and New Year and they make it a point to attend the Test match with families. Both MCG in Australia and Centurion in South Africa put on a grand show.

Although the term ‘Boxing Day’ is associated with sports events on the day after Christmas, it originated in Britian during the Victorian era. Servants used to work for their masters on Christmas Day and they were given a day off the following day and when they went home, the servants were given gifts put in a box to be shared with the family. Hence the term Boxing Day.

Although Sri Lanka has got no such traditions, cricket fans of the country know what it means in cricket and remember quite well some of the biggest Boxing Day events their team has been part of.

The no balling of Muttiah Muralitharan by Darrel Hair happened on Boxing Day in front of 55,000 people at MCG in 1995.

Nine years later, Sri Lanka were playing  a game in Auckland when news reached of deadly flooding in the country despite there being no rain and it took hours for the players to figure out that what had struck the nation was tsunami and not floods. That tour was aborted, and Sri Lanka returned home as the fate of several players’ parents and loved ones, especially those who were in the south coast, were unknown.

The Boxing Day Test in 2011 in Durban is etched in all Sri Lankan fans’ memories as for the first time the team won a Test match in South Africa.

The first Test was played at Centurion and Sri Lanka had been blown away inside three days to lose by an innings. There was little hope for the team and a 3-0 series whitewash was looming large. Former South African captain Keppler Wessels had suggested in commentaries that South Africa were too strong for the islanders and maybe the selectors should think of playing the ‘A’ team. That made a few seniors angry.

Head Coach Geoff Marsh re-esembled the team back to the Centurion on day four and five and replicated a Test match atmosphere in which training was conducted. There was a nine day gap between the first and second Tests and in a team bonding exercise the coach paired a senior player with a  junior.

Dinesh Chandimal was paired with Kumar Sangakkara, Lahiru Thirimanne was under the watch of T.M. Dilshan and Dimuth Karunaratne was put along with Mahela Jayawardene. The seniors were supposed to take juniors out for meals and coffee and the day before the second Test; on Christmas Day, the players were supposed to present gifts to each other. While this was an excellent team bonding exercise, for the younger players this was a great learning experience too.

By the time the second Test came, the players were raring to go. The team had gelled well.

Thilan Samaraweera was making a comeback to the side. He had been controversially axed from the side earlier and went onto showcase what the team had been missing with a back to the wall hundred. He celebrated his century folding his bat to the armpit making the bat look like a gun and shooting towards the dressing room. Shaun Pollock in commentaries said that he may well have been shooting at the selectors.

Chandimal was on debut and made twin half-centuries stitching some valuable partnerships with the tail.

Left-arm seamer Chanaka Welegedara is the sort of bowler who can make life difficult for batters with angles he creates. South Africa found themselves at 119 for eight with Welegedara accounting for the big four – Jacques Kallis, Graeme Smith, Hashim Amla and A.B. de Villiers. He finished with a five wicket haul.

Sri Lanka couldn’t believe themselves that they had a first innings lead of 170. Kumar Sangakkara had been dismissed for a duck in the first innings but he wasn’t going to miss out on a golden opportunity to beat South Africa and cashed in with a second innings hundred.

A target of 450 proved to be beyond South Africa’s reach as Sri Lanka created history with a 208 run win with Rangana Herath claiming a five wicket haul. Among his victims were Jacques Kallis, dismissed for a duck, the only time the great man had collected a pair in Tests. Mind you he featured in 166 Test matches in a career that spanned across 18 years.

The nation was celebrating. T.M. Dilshan had a tough initiation as captain but he was beginning to turn things around for the team. But little did he know that less than a month later he will be sacked as captain. There had been a coup. A bloodless coup!