Rangana Herath is one of the great cricketers of the modern age

The Telegraph in the UK, acknowledging Herath.

Herath has taken more wickets than any other Test Spinner in the past decade-CREDIT:AP
Fans at Winning moments of 3rd Test against Australia 2016

Source:  Jonathan Liew 16 AUGUST 2016 • 5:39PM

No left-arm spinner ever took a wicket in their life. For some reason, whenever a batsman gets out to one, it is always their own fault. Even the term ‘slow left-arm bowler’ feels vaguely derogatory, as if their only distinguishing feature is an intrinsic lack of verve. 

Rangana Herath's historical hat trick

And yet, with Rangana Herath, it feels like an entire appropriate description.

Rangana Herath on his remarkable career

Everything about Herath screams slowness. The trundling run-up, the delicate loop, the ascent to greatness. Herath is the guy you get stuck behind for half an hour on the A421. Herath is the baggage carousel at Gatwick Airport. Herath is the Festival Place Shopping Centre in Basingstoke on a wet Tuesday morning.

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If Herath ran a restaurant, you would have to wait until morning to get your food. But you would wait, all the same. Because it would be delicious.

Herath is the first Sri Lankan to take a Test hat-trick in 17 years CREDIT: REX

Here are some true sentences. Herath has taken more wickets than any other Test spinner in the past decade. He is the second most prolific left-arm spinner of all time. He is the first Sri Lankan to take a Test hat-trick in 17 years. In the third Test at Galle, which may be over by the time you read this, he was hit where it hurts by a lifter from Josh Hazlewood, and then took six Australian wickets as punishment. 

He is the last surviving Test player from the 20th century. He is 38 years old. He works in a bank.

At heart, this is a triumph of modesty over hubris. Herath has no mystery ball, no freak-limb, no library of sledges. No batsman ever endured sleepless nights wondering how they were going to play him.

A YouTube highlights reel of his career would consist of the exact same thing – innocuous-looking flight, batsman playing for turn, inevitable thud on pad as the ball skids straight on – again and again in a mesmerising loop.

Even in cricket-obsessed Sri Lanka, you will not see his face on advertising billboards promoting soft drinks and sporting apparel, although he did appear in a recent commercial for – ironically – super-fast broadband internet. Partly, this is due to the basic yeoman uncoolness of the slow left-arm bowler. Partly it is the Muttiah Muralitharan-sized shadow from which he spent a decade trying to escape.

Partly, though, it is Herath himself, and the way he violates our parameters of what a superstar cricketer should look like. World-beating athletes are not supposed to be a bit porky. World-beating athletes are not supposed to look like they have just woken up from a nap.
Also Read : List of Test cricket hat-tricks and some of the hat-trick trivia
World-beating athletes are not supposed to work in a bank. And they are not meant to keep improving, even as they approach the age of 40 and have had surgery on both knees.

Herath is a modern great CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES

But make no mistake: Herath is a modern great. Perhaps we underestimate how hard it is to unearth a genuinely world-class spinner. England have had one in the last four decades. Australia have had two in the last half-century, and they both essentially came along at the same time. New Zealand have had one in their history. South Africa have not had one since the 1950s.

Meanwhile, Herath ploughs on, passing the time between shifts at the Sampath Bank by knocking over the world’s No 1 team. And it is even possible to see in his timeless, trundling rhythms a sort of welcome correction to a game – and a world – reeling ever more rapaciously towards the fast, the overheated, the multi sensory, the now.

Herath may not be the hero cricket wants. But at this moment, he may just be the hero cricket needs.

Also Read : List of Test cricket hat-tricks and some of the hat-trick trivia