Anyone with a Test double hundred to their name has to be a more than capable batsman. Robert Key easily fits into that category and, after years of sterling service to Kent as an opening batsman and a captain, I find it bewildering that he doesn’t have more than just the one big innings against the Windies. In his 15 Test matches there was enough to suggest that Key could have forged a hugely successful career; his misfortune was to overlap with Marcus Trescothick, Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook. He took the game to the opposition, which I liked, and he reminded me of my old hero Ken Barrington, who used to impose himself on the game with his presence. Always quick with a smile and a joke, Rob is also extremely thoughtful on the game and I have always been impressed by what he has to say when I’ve seen him summarise for Sky Sports.
As an international cricketer you get to enjoy all that the highest level of the game has to offer, whether it is touring the world, playing alongside the best in the country or testing yourself against and getting to know the very best in the world. I was fortunate enough to do that for a few years, and of all the players I’ve met and got to know, there is one who has made me laugh and scratch my head more than any other – Muttiah Muralitharan.
An absolute icon of the game and just a brilliant man, Murali turned my world upside down for half a season in 2003 when he came to join Kent as one of our overseas players and produced some of the best cricket I’ve ever seen, as well as behaviour that just left me in stitches. Murali is a fantastic human being and there isn’t an ounce of malice in him, which is why a lot of the things he does are accompanied with the biggest grin in the game and you can’t help but love him.
He is Sri Lanka’s greatest export when it comes to cricket and, although he played most of his county cricket up at Lancashire, it was great for us to be able to have him for that summer, and he made a huge impact. In the time he was with us, he took us from bottom of the championship to second that year and he is talked about just as much now as he was back then.
The thing about Murali is that he just doesn’t shut up. He might not have a perfect command of the English language but that doesn’t stop him, and when he gets a bee in his bonnet he just doesn’t let it go. Even though the Kent dressing room has had its fair share of well-heeled and cut-glass accents in its day there has always been a healthy dose of reality there, too. And on entering the sanctity of that room, Murali was presented with an array of choice words that he simply couldn’t understand.
The one that most concerned him was the stereotypical name sports teams give to their Welsh or Kiwi colleagues. We had a New Zealand physio called Ian Erickson, who was called ‘Sheep-shagger’ – not entirely original but the old ones are the best. Murali was fascinated by it and wouldn’t stop asking him about it, which made us all laugh because Ian struggled to get across the concept of 13 sheep to every man, woman and child, which is the ratio back in his homeland.
Murali struggled to say the word ‘shagger’, too, so if ever there was a problem while he was bowling he would just shout ‘Sheep! Sheep!’ to get him to come on. After play, if ‘Sheep’ was busy, he would get his own personal assistant/driver/physio/cook/bag man to look after him. Murali looked after this chap really well, like he did everyone, but he once told me that if Murali was struggling to get to sleep he would come and get him up and ask him to rub his feet for him – even if it was three in the morning!
One day we were playing a championship game against Nottinghamshire up at Trent Bridge and Murali turned up with his man, ready for action. The club had given him his kit the week before and he had two white shirts for the four-day stuff and then two coloured shirts for the one-day games. As he pulled on his silver shirt to go out and field, a few of us thought he was having a joke. He wasn’t. He’d put the one-day and championship shirts into the wash together on a high temperature and managed to create a third kit for special occasions. It was 10 minutes before the start of play, so we had to run round to the Notts club shop and buy him a new shirt in which to play. We found a plain white one that didn’t have the Notts crest on it and then taped up the sponsor’s name on the other side. Still, to all intents and purposes Murali was playing against Notts in one of their own shirts. Did it bother him? Not a chance of it as he took six for 36 to win us the game, and he even signed and presented the shirt to a young lad after the match.
What happened after that game was a brilliant example of Murali’s generosity. Not only could he be generous with his money – he was always sneaking off to pay for restaurant bills without telling anyone – but the same was true of his time. He came off after bowling that spell and then sat down with Michael Carberry, who was just coming through, and he spent over an hour just talking to him about batting, passing on the knowledge he’d gathered over the years. He loves cricket so much that he will gladly talk all day about it and pass on what he knows, and he has a lot of knowledge to share.
However, he is also one of the dopiest cricketers I have ever seen. There was a game for Sri Lanka where he was once run out because he left the crease to give Kumar Sangakkara a hug. In a game against Leicestershire, where we were fighting to avoid the follow-on, he went into bat with Martin Saggers and struck a couple of sixes that took us to within 10 runs of getting there. The next over Martin cuts one to point, and they set off, but it is well fielded and Martin shouts, ‘No! Get back!’ The throw comes in and misses the stumps. Murali is a third of the way down and just stands there, watching the square leg pick it up and underarm it to the bowler. He turns and watches the bowler take the bails off and, throughout, he has not moved from the spot and ends up run out. That is how dozy he could be, but you couldn’t be upset with him about things like that. He came back into the dressing room and put together a sentence that contained broken Sinhalese, broken English and a smattering of swear words that would have made Jim Davidson proud. We were learning about the mastery of batting and spin bowling from him and he was developing a mouth like a sewer – it was a fair trade.
However, my overriding memory of a player who really injected a spark into county life for me and all those who played with him took place off the field late one evening. We also had Andrew Symonds in our side that year and, together with Murali, the three of us went out one night to a club in Canterbury. There was me and Symo drinking pints and Murali sipping on his Bacardi Breezer. It didn’t take too much to get Murali excited and that night we had a few, and let me tell you that he cannot, under any circumstances, dance to save his life. We were in the corner of the bar and Murali went off to the toilet. After a little while, Symo wondered where he’d got to. A little more time passed and still no sign, so I went off to look for him. He wasn’t in the toilet so I thought someone must have recognised him and was pestering him for a photo or an autograph. Still no sign of him. And then I noticed a bit of a commotion on the dance floor. It was like one of those flash-mob dances where everyone is doing the same moves, only they hadn’t arranged it beforehand.
At the centre of this Bollywood-style, Bhangra ‘light bulb’ dance was a certain Murali, bringing a touch of the subcontinent to Canterbury. His impact was wider than any of us thought it would be.