I knew Arjuna pretty well and he always struck me, not just as a fiercely proud Sri Lankan, but as a passionate Asian. He speaks freely and intelligently, on the differences in culture and nothing symbolised that more than his stand on Muralitharan which, to my Asian mind, represented his finest hour as captain of Sri Lanka.

To the world, he was a confrontist, trying to destroy a system of acceptance. To his team, and indeed to a lot of others, he was merely playing the elder brother, the head of a joint family, and in that role, he was protecting a younger brother. His stand on Muralitharan, and the Australian opposition to it, created the kind of bond that can exist only in family driven societies. He was “anna” and still is.

In course of time, he created an empire and benevolent as he thought he was, he was still a dictator. Anybody intruding on his territory was intruding on his family and he resented it. It led to a fall-out with Dav Whatmore after Sri Lanka had won the World Cup and it was only after the kingdom no longer belonged to Ranatunga that Whatmore could return.

This is a good time to go. He is still among the top five Sri Lankan batsmen, still capable of using the strength of his mind to win matches for them. He played a wonderful innings with a broken hand in Pakistan and surely his innings in the second Test at Kandy deserved to be a match-winning one. He would have made a good ice-cream commercial, not because his middle suggested he ate a few but because he was as cool.

And he could be polite, really polite. And for a man who was accused so often of being arrogant, he could be amazingly self-effacing. I remarked, a couple of years ago, on the amount of weight he had lost. “This Alex no” he started, “he makes me do extra work if I overeat. And you know I am lazy so it is better to eat less than work more.”

That afternoon, one of our producers at ESPN, was talking to him. She was on crutches and Ranatunga enquired politely what the problem was. Soon he had called his wife, was searching for a telephone number and was about to make a call to someone who used herbal extracts to treat bones and muscles. “You must go, if you need, I will organise a car for you…..” The producer was awestruck. All he said was “If I can help, what is there…” And yes, she was Australian !

Harsha Bhogle

Mail Cricket Editor