By Srian Obeyesekere

As a hectic day of cricket when opening batsman Pathum Nissanka unleashed all hell, wanes off under a clear tropical down South Galle sky hovering over the center of play in the ideally aesthetic environs for cricket, a seemingly passive slow motion act as his bat dabs at a floating delivery and fumbles smothering the ball as it takes the edge of his bat does mark the end of an era when bat ruled over ball in a fast and furious pace that thrust Angelo Mathews among the batting dynamics of his era best exemplified by that memorably glorious historic series winning century in the English backyard at Headingley.
That was over a good decade, 11 years to be exact in 2014 when the debonair athletically lanky spartan, a Trojan with the bat in his prime hey day of his cricketing test career when he wore the big leadership mantle typically led by example from the front.

At Galle on a June day Thursday the 19th, the great man had exited like a yawn when he fell to the guile of Maimul Haque’s floating spin.

Not that Mathews did not go out without a fight.

The old flourish was rekindled in traces when he fired one to the stands and 3 to the ropes in a 69 ball 38 when he added 89 for the third wicket with Nissanka following the Nissanka-Dinesh Chandimal (54) second wicket 157 flyer in a close of play score of 368 for 4 with Nissanka last out for 187.

As the great man trudged back to all-round applause, the question remained whether Mathews would make one more last walk to the crease depending on the dictates of the match with two more days of play remaining.

ENDED WHERE IT STARTED?

Or was it the last walk to the middle which if so, the memory would live with the great man of a career with the bat that so ended where it started.