Angelo Mathews: Epitome of A Fighting Spirit in Cricket, 2015

On the morning of September 1, 2015, I was frantically trying to connect to the Wifi at Charles de Gaulle Airport. When I had boarded the flight the previous night, Sri Lanka were in a precarious position in the third and final test of a series against India. Sitting at 67/3 in a chase of 386 on a fifth day SSC pitch, any result other than a loss would have been a most unexpected triumph.

I fully expected to open the phone that morning and see Sri Lanka all out for 150 before lunch. But to my surprise, Sri Lanka had not capitulated. They were 183/5, with Kusal Perera (43) and Angelo Mathews (74) at the crease. For the next hour, I was glued to my screen, watching the runs tick over as tea approached, with Angelo getting to his seventh test century. I boarded the train with the hope that Angelo and Kusal might power Sri Lanka to a most unlikely victory.

In the end, Sri Lanka did not get there. Kusal got out on the stroke of tea and Angelo followed shortly thereafter on the other side of the break. But the optimism I felt upon boarding the train speaks to the confidence that Angelo of 2015 inspired. When he was at the crease, I believed that anything was possible. And why not? We had seen what he had done at MCG in 2010 and at Headingley in 2014.

In the days after the match, I remember telling everyone who would listen that Angelo was as good as, if not better than the so-called Fab Four. He was the leading run scorer in the three-test series, easily outpacing the much more ballyhooed Virat Kohli, not to mention the likes of Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, and Rohit Sharma. His career average was now a stunning 52.08 on the back of a 26-match streak that produced an incredible 2518 runs. And he was a handy bowler to boot. Angelo’s place in the cricketing pantheon seemed inevitable.

It was not to be. Lower-body injuries, rifts with coaches and management, the burdens of carrying a faltering side proved too much for Angelo. In the 66 matches since that fourth innings hundred against India, Angelo has averaged 39.69. Certainly serviceable, but far from the world-beating performance that the Sri Lankan public had come to expect.

In recent years, there has been something of an animus against Angelo among Sri Lankan fans. It is as if the almost superhuman exploits of young Angelo made the more middling performances of his later years almost impossible to stomach. Part of me wonders if Angelo may have been more deeply appreciated if a precipitous loss of form had forced him into an early retirement. Then, at least, we could have focused solely on Angelo’s brilliance.

These visceral reactions to Angelo’s failure to match his earlier exploits, I think, reflects something about ourselves. Maybe in seeing Angelo lose his superhuman touch, we recognize a little bit of our own mortality. It is a simple fact of human existence that there will be things that used to come easy for us that will one day no longer be within our reach. Perhaps, that is why we are not so eager to see a good-but-not-great Angelo ply his trade.

It seems, however, that Angelo has done us on this point. As far as I can glean from his valedictory remarks, Angelo is proud of his career and his perseverance in the face of numerous adversities. He has learned to live with a version of himself that is not what it once was. In this regard, the Angelo of 2025 reminds me of the final lines uttered by the speaker of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses:

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.