Word: lanka
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...John Howard rarely misses an opportunity to comment on his greatest passion: cricket. An obsessive fan of the game?Australians call him a "cricket tragic"?it surprised few to hear that Howard holds an opinion on an issue that is the talk of the international cricket fraternity: Is Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan, a slow bowler with the uncommon ability to spin a ball like a top, a "chucker"? Howard didn't hesitate: "Yes," he told supporters at a political function in rural Australia last month. Howard had, in effect, labeled the most successful bowler in cricket history...
...Lanka, predictably, fumed. "Howard has no authority, professional qualification to pass a judgment on a cricketing professional," thundered Colombo's Asian Tribune in an editorial. Sports and Youth Affairs Minister Jeevan Kumaratunga told the Sunday Times that Howard's comments were "absurd," claiming that Australia "could not bear the extraordinary heights the Sri Lankan spinner was achieving." Few in Sri Lanka have forgotten that it was an Australian cricket umpire, Ross Emerson, who was among the first to cast doubt on the bowling action of Sri Lanka's favorite son by repeatedly penalizing Muralitharan for "chucking"?using a bent, instead...
...protect one of our national treasures." And last week, the Sri Lankan cricket board made a formal request to the ICC to change the rules to allow for Muralitharan's confounding pitch. Neither effort is likely to succeed. Meanwhile, Muralitharan has hinted he might pull out of Sri Lanka's tour to Australia next month. No cricket fan wants to see that, and that includes John Howard...
Holmes haunts The Hamilton Case (Little, Brown; 307 pages) as well, a miniature masterpiece of a mystery by Michelle de Kretser, who lives in Australia but was born on the island of Sri Lanka. The Hamilton Case is set there, back when it was the English colony of Ceylon--"a useful bauble," De Kretser writes, "fingered and pocketed by the Portuguese, Dutch and British in turn." Our hero is Sam Obeysekere, a Ceylonese lawyer educated at Oxford who, with his genteel Western airs, is seemingly bent on out-Englishing the English. His story takes some time to reveal itself...
...simplistic," he says: the consequences of what's happening will soon reach the top, and dynasties can crumble. The West Indies were dominant in the '80s, but cricket there is now languishing, as it is to varying degrees and for different reasons in England, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, where Australia begins a two-Test series on May 22. "I'm not trying to be a doomsayer," Chappell says. "But if Australia were to take a dive, cricket would be in serious trouble...