Mathews bows out as a stalwart who gave it his all for Sri Lanka

Muttiah Muralitharan was hoisted by his teammates on their shoulders amid raucous cheer from a captivated crowd when he signed off in Test cricket with 800 scalps and a resounding 10-wicket victory against a star-studded India in Galle in July 2010. When Kumar Sangakkara hung up his boots in August 2015, also against India in Colombo, he was Sri Lanka’s highest-ever run-scorer and widely feted as one of the greatest batters from the subcontinent. A few months prior to Sangakkara’s exit, his close friend Mahela Jayawardene bid adieu with a half-century in his final innings in an emphatic 105-run win over Pakistan at Colombo.

In terms of longevity and straining every sinew for Sri Lanka, Angelo Mathews, fourth on the list of the country’s most capped Test players with 119 appearances over a 16-year span, is right up there with the illustrious names just mentioned. But it is symptomatic of Sri Lanka’s corrosive decline over the past decade that Mathews’ Test career came to a close last Saturday after a drab draw against Bangladesh in Galle even as the attention of the cricketing world was firmly fixed on a mouthwatering battle between heavyweights England and India at Headingley.

When the 38-year-old walked out to bat for the final time in his Test career, Sri Lanka was 34 for two on day five and attempting to salvage a stalemate in a contest where both teams piled on big first-innings totals. He chewed up 45 deliveries and scored eight runs before an inside-edge onto his pad off left-arm spinner Taijul Islam popped to Mominul Haque at silly point. In the first essay, after getting a guard of honour from the Bangladesh players, he fell to Mominul’s slow left-arm orthodox on 39.

Having been dropped from the T20I team a year ago and the ODI team after the 2023 World Cup in India — where he became the first batter in international cricket, incidentally against Bangladesh, to be dismissed timed out — Mathews’ decision to announce his Test retirement ahead of the Bangladesh series was a matter of practicality rather than necessarily losing the drive to train and compete. With Sri Lanka’s next Test assignment against the West Indies in the Caribbean being a year away — a grim reality about the ICC Future Tours Programme (FTP) that highlights the chasm between the ‘Big Three’ and the other Test-playing nations — he saw little point in carrying on beyond the Galle Test. He remains available for selection in the white-ball formats.

“I played my 100th Test in Galle, so I thought I’d say goodbye in Galle. But the main reason was because we don’t have any games coming up, at least for now. After this, we’ll be having our next assignment in Test cricket after a year’s time, that is a very long wait,” Mathews told the media ahead of his Test farewell versus Bangladesh.

“I thought it’s good to give an opportunity to whoever is going to replace me in the second Test, because he’s not going to get an opportunity till the next year. And in that year, you don’t know what’s going to happen. So I thought I’d just play one game and then try and give an opportunity to the other guy who’s replacing me in the second Test.”

It may not be the ideal way to walk into the sunset, but that shouldn’t take anything away from Mathews’ stellar Test career. To finish with 8214 runs at an average of 44.4 with 16 centuries, including a best of 200, means he will go down as one of Sri Lanka’s most prolific run-makers behind Sangakkara and Jayawardene. He was also a shrewd medium-pacer before a body battered by injuries compelled him to cut down on his bowling.

All-round skill

Right from the moment that he burst onto the international scene in 2009, it felt like Sri Lanka had found a pot of gold. In a nation traditionally starved of genuine pace-bowling all-rounders, much like neighbouring India, Mathews was a ray of sunshine with all the right ingredients to become one of the best of his breed in the business.

Certainly in the first half of his career, as part of a highly-skilled and eclectic Sri Lankan outfit shaped by the sharp minds of Sangakkara and Jayawardene, Mathews’ performances were on par with the high expectations.

Sample his numbers till the end of 2015: after 56 Tests, he had tallied 4015 runs at 50.18. With the ball as well, 30 of the 33 scalps that he has ended with came in this period.

He was at his peak as a Test batter across 2013 and 2014, averaging more than 70 in both years and producing stupendous knocks that embodied his game awareness and sublime range. A case in point is a Test against Pakistan at Abu Dhabi that began on December 31, 2013. Across two innings, Mathews, who had become captain earlier that year, showcased starkly contrasting and yet equally effective approaches. In the first, he strode in at 76 for four with Jayawardene already back in the pavilion. Soon, Sri Lanka would be 82 for five with Sangakkara, too, making the long walk back. Mathews’ riposte was a brilliant, counterattacking 91 off just 127 balls in a modest total of 204. Second time around, with Pakistan amassing a lead of 179 runs, the Lankans were effectively seven for four and on the cusp of defeat when Mathews marked his guard at the start of day four. What followed was a show of supreme defiance as Mathews dug in for seven hours and 34 minutes, scoring 157 off 343 deliveries without getting dislodged to help his side eke out a hard-fought draw.

Best knock

As marvellous as these two innings in the desert were, it is hard to look beyond his 160 against England at Headingley in the summer of 2014 as his greatest knock. After scraping a nerve-wracking draw against Alastair Cook’s men in the opener at Lord’s, where Mathews hit a first-innings ton, the visitors seemed to have no escape route when they were reduced to 277 for seven, an overall lead of just 169 runs, in the second dig in Leeds. But Mathews, once again, stood up to be the saviour.

With Rangana Herath willing to put a price on his wicket at the other end, Mathews, all nous and nerves of steel, delivered a masterclass in batting with the tail. He cobbled together a 149-run stand for the eighth wicket with the left-arm spinner against an English attack led by James Anderson as Sri Lanka stretched its total to 457 and secured a memorable 1-0 series win. That he had figures of 16-4-44-4 in the first innings was a testament to his all-round prowess.

In the shorter formats, too, Mathews was irrepressible. Just how significant he was to the set-up can be understood from Sangakkara’s assertion that the all-rounder’s absence for the 2011 ODI World Cup final against India due to injury was a major factor in Sri Lanka’s defeat.

“If you take our entire campaign, whatever we did, Mathews’ overs and his ability to bat with the tail and read situations was an incredible bonus to us. He was a young chap who came into the side and from day one he could read situations. It’s just instinct, how to up the rate, how to control the bowler, when to accelerate. The composition of the side and the fact that we were forced to make the change was to me the turning point,” Sangakkara said in a chat with ace off-spinner R. Ashwin in 2020.

Besides the 2011 50-over World Cup, Mathews was also a core member of the team that finished runner-up in the 2009 and 2012 T20 World Cups. The curse of losing a spree of finals came to an end in the 2014 edition when the islanders got past India by six wickets to give Sangakkara and Jayawardene a perfect swansong from the shortest format. Mathews, as ever, played his part with figures of one for 25 in four overs.

In these years, Mathews was able to feed off the imposing presence of Sangakkara and Jayawardene and do his thing. But once the two grizzled veterans walked away in quick succession, Mathews had to bear a bulk of the burden as the skipper and senior statesman. Curiously, he played more matches than anyone else in international cricket from 2010 to 2015, which perhaps resulted in the spate of injuries and fitness issues in the latter half of his career.

Mathews hit rock bottom in 2018 when he was sacked as limited-overs captain, removed from the team altogether and mocked for his fitness and running between the wickets by then coach Chandika Hathurusingha. Some others may have found the challenge of bouncing back and silencing detractors at that stage too demanding, but not the man from Colombo.

“It was in 2018 that I sat down with Dilshan Fonseka (men’s team trainer) and looked at the amount of injuries that I had. He told me that my body couldn’t bear it. So I changed everything — the way I eat, my lifestyle, and my training,” Mathews recollected in a recent interview to ESPNCricinfo.

And to underline that he isn’t the sort of character to take things lying down, he celebrated a rearguard Test hundred against New Zealand in Wellington in December that year by doing push-ups and flexing his right bicep in the direction of Hathurusingha in the Sri Lankan dressing room.

Looking back, Mathews says he doesn’t have much to regret in his career except the fact that he didn’t join the 10,000-run club in Tests. “I couldn’t achieve the 10,000-run mark. But every other thing, I’ve given my best in every situation,” Mathews reflected in that interview. “I’ve tried to win games for my country in every situation. Giving 100% to your team in every single game is another thing, so I was wanting to play all three formats and contribute with bat, ball, and in the field, in every single game. I was absolutely going for it.”

Anybody who watched him over these years will attest to that last bit. Just as Sri Lanka has found it impossible to fill the proverbial big shoes of Muralitharan, Sangakkara and Jayawardene then, Mathews will be an extremely hard act to follow.