Former Sri Lankan cricketer Muttiah Muralitharan recalled the infamous 2004 Tsunami incident that destroyed a lot of lives in the South-east coast of India and also Sri Lanka. The deadly waves that hit the shores of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka ended up taking over 38,000 lives in the Emerald Isle. On the eve of its 17th anniversary, the Lankan cricketer recalled the incident.
Muralitharan was heading to a function, and people started shouting that there were waves coming their way. Watching those people panic, he turned back and went to Colombo, which managed to keep him and his family away from the tides.
“On the way, my family and I were going near Kalutara — a place where you can see the water in the river which goes to a lagoon. It was a brown color on a full moon day.
We thought we should go ahead before the high tide comes. Halfway through the journey, there are people shouting away,”
he stated.
The off-spinner recalled that they turned back and raced to Colombo after that, because of which he managed to stay away from the tides. He mentioned that if he was 20 minutes late, he would’ve been caught in the waves.
Although WHO mentions that around 30,000 people were killed, Muralitharan believes that over a 100,000 people must’ve lost their lives as a lot of villages got wiped away near the sea coast. Muralitharan, who was the ambassador of the World Food Programme launched by UNO, had funded food machines and a lot of medical assistance to a lot of the impacted people.
A lot of such incidents were reported among Lankan cricketers who were in closer proximity to the deadly waves. Dinesh Chandimal famously recalled that his house was tormented by the Tsunami, due to which he had lost his cricket kit.
It was one of the deadliest disasters that happened in the subcontinent, which killed nearly 225,000 people and on the Richter scale, its magnitude was recorded as 9.1-9.5. The tsunami ended up impacting nearly 14 countries.
