Flight is how long the ball hangs in the air. Drift is the trajectory it takes from fingers to pitch. Mastery of these two elements is what makes a great spin bowler. Everything else is frills.

The strategy for grappling with a spinner is to use your feet, get to the pitch of the ball and smother it before it deceives you. Good flight makes a ball appear closer than it is...

Clear your head. Picture the most beautiful person of your thoughts. Real, imagined, mythic. Greek God or Audrey Hepburn. Your choice. Let’s call that person Beauty.

Now imagine joggers you have seen. At Galle Face or Parliament grounds or wherever your experience of life and joggers has taken you. Think of the most stupid looking runner. Arms akimbo, legs...

The umpire, an SSC stalwart and fellow Royalist, pretended to reproach de Mel, but only ended up convincing Mathew to relent. So Mathew had to bowl over the wicket to right-handers and suddenly found that the awkward angle served up all sorts of possibilities.

He dispatched de Mel with a ball that cut in at right angles, bamboozling...

Mathew had the ability to bowl much faster than his tantalising 57 mph. He began cricket as an opening bowler for Thurstan College. This is not unusual. Spinners frequently begin life as pacemen. What was unusual was that he did so with his other arm.

Reports are hazy as to when the metamorphosis from right-arm quick to left-arm...

Today Sri Lanka holds records for the highest team test score, the highest team one-day score, the highest partnership for any wicket and the most sixers in a game.

We also boast Asia’s highest alcohol consumption per capita of the last decade and the world’s highest suicide rate of 1998. We’re even credited with inventing the suicide bomber. You’re welcome...