Marvelous Marvan

one of the hardest things to do is say goodbye when you're still at the top of your game. it's even harder when you feel you have something left to prove and know you can. tpr of course had no such problems when saying goodbye to copywriting. marvan atapattu has done just that. tpr would like to take a little time out to salute him for it.

in a cricket world where old warhorses find it increasingly hard to listen to their creaking bodies, marvan has chosen an almost perfect time to put in his papers. at 37, the 'all or nothing' batsman has lambasted his detractors, proved them wrong with his performance and, better still, not given them another chance to get even by disciplining him. now that's what we call superb timing. (something marvan didn't have in spades as a player.)

marvan, the player was an athertonesque-performer who personified determination, determination and...more determination. initially, and still, remembered for his incredible, zero-filled debut series, marvan went on to make more, and bigger, double hundreds than rahul dravid and sachin tendulkar. which just goes to prove that it's best not to lay too much emphasis on first impressions.

what are the odds of an indian player with a similarly horrifying run of ducks, going on to have a career as long and illustrious as marvan's? most likely, zero.

in passing, tpr would like to draw the readers' attention to a certain sourav ganguly, a player infinitely more talented than marvan and blessed with a superb sense of timing, which seems to have sadly deserted him.

happily for sourav, in recent times, he seems to have buttressed his always silken skills with a healthy dose of marvanesque grit. we sincerely hope the great man will give us an opportunity to do a 'marvan' for him. after all, the last thing we'd want to say is something heart-breaking like 'enough sourav'. enough TPR.