"Muralitharan learnt swear words fast.' "Muralitharan did not know any English.'' This and other claims were made in articles on the issues surrounding cricket, Muralitharan and Australia, which appeared in a new and exciting Sri Lankan website, www.freepresslanka.us.

But cricket is not the only issue. The thread of feelings of alienation felt by Sri Lankans in Europe and in developed countries all over the world, runs through many articles that appear in the current issues of the site www.freepresslanka.us.

The Sri Lankan press never complains that Shane Warne, the champion Australian spin bowler does not know any Sinhalese, but it is the lot of the Aussie press to complain that Muralitharan (always described as a son of a sweet seller or son of a confectioner) did not know any English but learnt it fast.

Log on at the above mentioned website, and you will learn that Canada is closing its borders fast to refugees, and that many are trying their best to get in, before the doors close shut.

But, one thing we can't pretend is that there is a blurring of borders, and that there is worldwide, a general clash of cultures. This clash of cultures is very often not mentioned in polite society -- or in the polite discourse in the newspapers and in the media. But in cricket, there has been a forum that has opened up for this clash of cultures to be on full display.

Therefore, nothing seems to be politically incorrect when the Australian press says that Muralitharan did not know a word of English, and that he was a son of a sweet seller. That makes it sound as if Muralitharan's father was selling bombai motai on the street -- but the fact is that he was a established businessman in Kandy..

But what's odd, is that all of this is relevant in Australia today, because in Muralithran the Australians see a somewhat beautiful barbarian at the gates. They like to write about him, because they seem to be mesmerised by him without even facing a ball by him.

To that extent this whole Muralitharan thing has brought the clash of cultures into the open, and therefore Muralitharan will be remembered for something else in history other than for being cricket's best bowler of all time, with a perpetually bent arm action.

The matter of the bent arm, as articles in the website for instance show, can be dissected until the cows come home, but ultimately it is not the bent arm that even academics such as Michael Roberts have been worried about. Their concern, though not exactly represented in those terms, is with Muralitharan as a symbol of the larger chasms and division within the clash of cultures.

Through Muralithran Australian writers have sought to make their usual criticism about inequality in so called Third World societies such as ours. One writer says that Muralitharan does not exactly have the finesse (or the panache or whatever they choose to call it) of either Arthur Ashe, or of Tiger Woods, but that he has done his bit for the Tamil community in Sri Lanka and this whole race relations business.

OK, go ahead pigeon hole Muralitharan as long as he serves the larger purpose of talking about the clash of cultures vicariously. There is no need to write a thesis about minority sentiment in Sri Lanka as opposed to say minority aspirations in Australia, as long as all these comparisons can be done through writing about this one man - Muralitharan. Not just Muralitharan of course, but the whole phenomenon of this upstart country which has this upstart bowler in their cricket team.

Academics may be falling over their feet to show that they identified this cricket nationalism first.

But it is not so much the patriotic sentiments that are associated with cricket, as it is the fact that cricket is a vehicle for vicariously enacting certain desires such as the desire to incorporate coloured people in Western society -- only strictly in terms of their underling status.

For instance, take the case of Canada which prides itself as a country which wants refugees, but is also closing its borders to refugees because these same refugees may have got a little uppity by now.

Well , maybe not uppity, but to put it in more sober terms, they have grown a little too tired of refugees because these refugees are challenging these equal-opportunity societies to deliver on their equal opportunities promises.

But that is difficult because these societies never really want people from Third World cultures to assimilate -- it is certainly not their subconscious desire to want them to assimilate.

Their subconscious desire is to let them be like Muralitharans, else why is it that there is so much written about Muralitharan to suggest that he may be a phenomenon, but he is still only a beautiful barbarian? That's constantly suggested about the Sri Lankan team too. Once, a British cricket writer wrote how Hashan Tillekeratne took his washing to be done by a Sri Lankan family in England during the World Cup -- and all the time the suggestion is that 'these people who play cricket from these other countries are nothing but aberrations." "Even if they are beginning to look like us when they play cricket, they are not really like us -- no they are not us at all.'' That is the constant message that emanates from the Australian press, when they discuss the Sri Lankan cricket phenomenon whether in a playing field context, or off the playing field context.

But this exactly represents the clash of cultures. Apparently the American power elite for instance, does not like the current standoff between Iraq and the US to be represented as a clash of cultures.

But the clash of cultures is not in the so called war against terrorism, but in the attitudes that this war has spawned globally. One thing is that it has brought to the surface the submerged xenophobia and suspicion in the West entertained against 'all people of colour' who are have been so thoroughly patronised within these western cultures that it is no longer possible to call most of them 'people of colour' in those societies at all. They are known in various other terms as immigrants or as refugees, or as displaced persons or whatever the case may be.

But, if Muralitharan is constantly reminded that he is a sweet maker's son who learnt his English slowly, these aliens are constantly reminded in the clash of cultures that they may aspire to everything the Westerners aspire to -- but they will never quite get there because of what they were. Once a sweet maker's son, always a sweet maker's son, once an Asian Arab or African, always an Asian Arab or an African.

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