Chaminda Vaas

You would rarely associate the word all time great for a seam bowler, more of a medium pacer, coming from Sri Lanka and playing a majority of his cricket on the slow, low tracks at home, custom made to satisfy the hunger of the giant, Muttiah Muralitharan. Chaminda Vaas, earns that rare great distinction. Playing in an era that saw some of the services of Ambrose, Walsh, McGrath, Wasim, Waqar, Lee, to name a few, this left-handed genius has carved out a niche for himself that places him right up there with the best.

Not the tallest, not the most astutely built and certainly not the most fearsome with his pace, Vaas over the several years of spearheading the Lankan bowling attack had developed all sorts of variations. He became synonymous with the  in-dipper to a right-hander, a delivery that swung in ever so late to fox the batsman after luring him into believing that it would harmlessly go through. Add to that his conventional swing and ability to seam the ball around even on the flattest of tracks in the world. With the advent of T20s and batsmen getting innovative, he developed the off-cutter and mastered the art of getting the old ball to reverse.

And lest we forget his skills with the bat down the order. He started off in First-Class cricket as a 16-year old in 1990 and was thrust into the international scene with a mere 13 matches under his belt, barely past his teens. The impact though was instantaneous. Guiding his side to their first ever overseas win, he took a 10-fer and topped it up with 30s in either innings to beat New Zealand in Napier in 1994-95. That was merely the start of some supremely mind-boggling performances that followed. 14 wickets in a match on the placid wickets against West Indies in 2001, the first and the only man so far in the history of ODIs to grab an 8-wicket haul, two ODI hat-tricks (one of them coming in the first three balls in a World Cup match), just to name a few. Add 3000 Test runs with the bat to all that.

It barely comes as a surprise that he ended with 300 Test and 400 ODI scalps to his name. It hence was only just when he featured in the ICC World XIs in both the ODIs and the Tests in 2004-05. You do not need much of a validation when someone of the class of Aravinda de Silva calls him accurate, nagging, hard to get away.

After his retirement, he has kept himself busy around the game with his coaching assignments. He started off as the bowling coach for New Zealand in 2012, hopped loyalties to his home country in 2013 and oversaw the 2015 World Cup as a part of it. With a brief stay with Ireland during the 2016 World T20, he returned back to his loyal colours back home.

By - Vineet Anantharaman