Nov 28 - Dec 4, 2004
TAMIL TOWN
• Muttiah Muralitharan was born in
Kandy on April 17, 1972, the eldest of
the four sons of a successful biscuit
maker
• At the age of nine, he was sent to St
Anthony's College, a private school run
by Benedictine monks, where his talent
as a bowler caught the eye of the
school coach, Sunil Fernando
• By 1991, aged 19, he was touring
England with the Sri Lankan national
side
• Over the next five years, Murali
perfected the art of “spin bowling”, a
slower and more sophisticated
technique than the pace bowling which
dominated cricket in the 1980s
• During a 1996 tour of Australia,
controversy threatened Murali’s career,
when he was twice penalised for
bowling with a suspect action. However,
analysis by the University of Hong Kong
proved sufficient for the International
Cricket Commission (ICC) to clear him.
The ICC recently changed its rules, so
that Murali’s bowling style is no longer
in dispute
• In 1996, Murali’s bowling helped lead
Sri Lanka to victory in cricket’s
prestigious World Cup tournament
• Murali achieved his greatest triumph
on May 14 earlier this year, when he
took his 527th wicket and briefly held
the world record for the highest number
of test wickets – he has since been
overtaken by Australia’s Shane Warne.
He also holds the record for the highest
number of five wicket hauls in a test
innings and 10 wicket hauls in a test
match
• In 2002, Wisden, the cricketing Bible,
named him as the greatest bowler in
over 100 years of cricket
• Murali, whose role models in sports
include U.S. basketball star Michael
Jordan and West Indian cricketer Sir
Vivien Richards, established in
December 2003 a humanitarian
foundation for the development of
children and youth. The Muralitharan
and Gunasekera Foundation (named in
part after his manager, Kushil
Gunasekera) has launched more than
100 projects in education, sports,
medical aid and help for the disabled
humanitarian partner, recently visited former war zones in
his country to see for himself how WFP helps people get
back on their feet. Press officer Heather Hill accompanied
him.
Kilinochchi, Nov 25, 2004 - It’s hard to find this Sri Lankan town
on a map, harder still to get here.
Sealed off for 21 years during the country’s tragic civil war,
Kilinochchi is the political centre of territory controlled by Tamil
Tigers on the northern part of the island. Today, more than two
years after the ceasefire agreement was signed, the ravages of war
are still visible, on the scarred landscape and its equally scarred
people.
But, for one day in November, this town was transformed. Muttiah
Muralitharan arrived, an event so extraordinary in such an isolated
rural region as to stagger the imagination.
Better known as just Murali, the 32-year-old cricket legend came
here on a three-day mission to the former war zones to observe
WFP activities and to raise awareness of the fight against hunger.
Everywhere he went, he was mobbed, particularly by cricket-mad
schoolboys for whom the name Murali is pure magic.
ASIAN HERO
Murali, who was selected by Time Magazine as one of the “Top 20
Heroes of Asia” for 2004, visited a nutrition clinic for mothers and
their children, half-a-dozen primary schools and a food-for-work
project to enlarge a water reservoir for rice paddy irrigation. As a
humanitarian partner with WFP, he was making his first field visit to
meet WFP’s beneficiaries, the poorest of the poor in the most
deprived area of his country.
At the Kilinochchi primary school, more than 1,000 children waited
all day for him to come – and then besieged him for autographs
and photographs.
At the Nallur Vidyalayam school in the nearby town of Poonahari,
600 students greeted him with rapturous applause as he strolled
the school grounds through shoals of boys and chatted with
children having their mid-morning meal.
At every school he visited, he left behind a gift of a cricket bat,
gloves, stump and ball.
PEACE ICON
As a member of the country’s Tamil minority, an international sports
hero who has broken world records and a humanitarian who co-
founded the Muralitharan and Gunasekera Foundation, Murali has
emerged as an icon of peace and unity in a bitterly divided land.
Murali “has changed the face of the game [of cricket] and, no less
significant, has given hope to a nation torn by 21 years of bloody
civil war,” says Time Magazine in its annual selection of 20 Asians
with outstanding achievement.
“With the country now enjoying a rare peace, children have
returned to playing cricket by the road, in between minefields and
bomb craters. Murali is the man they all try to imitate.”
The WFP tour started in Jaffna , the northernmost city in Sri Lanka ,
fiercely contested during the war. Once the pearl of Tamil-Hindu
religion and culture in South Asia, today Jaffna is in ruins. Very few
buildings escaped shelling and the whole of the Jaffna peninsula
was attacked by both sides during the war.
EVERYONE TO WORK
“Jaffna has not made much progress in development and
rehabilitation since I visited last year,” said Murali. “To eradicate
poverty and make people lead a prosperous life, everyone should
work to find a permanent end to war.”
And, as he did when he first joined with WFP in June as the star of
the Colombo segment of the Walk the World charity event
sponsored by the Dutch transport and logistics company and WFP
corporate partner TNT/TPG, Murali used the playing field as a
metaphor for peace in Sri Lanka.
“As a sportsman, all I can say is that Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims
come together to play cricket side by side,” Murali told a reporter,
after he met here with the second-highest official of the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). “Likewise, the politicians and the
LTTE must come together and make peace for the good of this
country’s people.”
VILLAGE TALK
But Murali also showed that he can talk easily to all the people.
At a water reservoir near Anurdhapura, Murali climbed down the
side of the retaining wall and listened attentively to the muddy,
sweat-covered villagers on the WFP food-for-work team as they
told him about their chronic water shortages and the effect this has
had on the rice crop.
He took note of their needs and promised to do what he could to
help. His final gesture, which I glimpsed through the throng of
people watching his visit, was to hand over some cash to one of the
village leaders. I asked him later what it was for.
“I gave them money to buy the cricket equipment because we had
no more sets left,” Murali explained. [WFP]
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