Only two miles from the centre of Sri Lanka’s beautiful second city, a school run by Benedictine monks is preparing for what it believes will be the proudest moment in its 150-year history. There have been many distinguished old boys of St Anthony’s College in Kandy, but some time in the coming days and weeks the most famous of them all is expected to smile his trademark toothy grin, twirl his controversial right arm and make cricket history by becoming the leading Test wicket-taker of all time.

Possibly as early as this week in Hobart, Muttiah Muralitharan, the Sri Lanka off spinner, will take the wickets he requires to pass Shane Warne’s Test world record of 708. He was seven short when the final day’s play began this morning in the first Test against Australia in Brisbane but was not expected to bowl as the home team closed in on an easy win. In Sri Lanka, a country where cricket fever is never absent for long, nowhere will the celebrations be louder when the record falls than at his old school.

In his office in the school’s cloistered courtyard, Father Titus Rodrigo, St Anthony’s principal, is making plans. “We will be so happy when he does it,” he said yesterday. “Murali is a giant. Whether it is the next match or the one after that, we feel confident he will achieve this because he is such a cool-headed player.”

Rodrigo plans to ask Sri Lankan government ministers for permission to give his pupils a day off to celebrate the occasion, at which there will be “crackers [fireworks] and singing”. He will invite Muralitharan to receive a special award at a school prize-giving night. He is also considering asking him for the match ball that completes the feat, as well as his whites and even his socks. “We would, of course, wash them, but it would be great to have them - though only the ones he is wearing at that particular moment,” Rodrigo said. “If he wants to donate any of these things we would house them in the school museum. At the moment we have a few of his awards and posters, but we want a special display cabinet for him.

“Murali was here from grade one up to when he completed his studies and he trained in these grounds. It will be a very great achievement for the school.”

The first time Muralitharan seized the record, pipping Warne to go past Courtney Walsh’s 519 wickets in May 2004, he arrived home to a message of congratulations from Chandrika Kumaratunga, the Sri Lanka President. In Kandy, fans danced in the streets and kissed the ground. As his triumphant procession reached St Anthony’s, which was one of Sri Lanka’s leading private schools until it was taken over by the state in the 1970s, pupils formed an archway of cricket bats for him to walk through.

This time, with Warne, his great Australia rival, retired, Muralitharan’s record is likely to last much longer and the celebrations promise to be even bigger. One guest of honour if the record is broken will be Sunil Fernando, Muralitharan’s former school coach and the man who persuaded him to give up fast bowling and to try spinning the ball.

Fernando first set eyes on his prodigy when Muralitharan was playing cricket with a tennis ball in the school grounds at the age of 9. The former pupil still addresses him as “sir”. Fernando said yesterday: “One day I saw a small boy bowling medium pace with a soft ball and I thought there was something in him, so I asked him if he wanted to come and play in my hard-ball side. Even then, at the age of 9, he had something extra.”

For the next few years, Muralitharan practised several times a week on a concrete wicket in Fernando’s garden, but it was not until he was 15 that the coach suggested he try bowling off cutters. “By then I had three other bowlers who were bowling really fast but I didn’t want to lose Murali because he was a team man,” Fernando said. “So I called him over during practice and asked him whether he would like to bowl off cutters. The next match he took five wickets.”

Over the following years Muralitharan’s schoolboy bowling feats became legendary across Sri Lanka. In the 1989-90 season he took 105 wickets, rising to 127 the next year, when he was named Sri Lanka’s schoolboy cricketer of the year. On one occasion Fernando, who has never believed claims that Muralitharan’s unusual action makes him a “chucker”, remembers his former pupil bowling with tears in his eyes because St Anthony’s were losing.

Fernando will be watching the television when his former pupil has a chance to break the record against Australia in the second Test, which starts on Friday. If not, the moment may come in Muralitharan’s home town when Sri Lanka play England in the first Test in Kandy next month. “It will be a very satisfying moment,” Fernando said. “That is the pleasure a coach gets.”

At the school cricket ground yesterday, where a plaque celebrates Muralitharan’s achievements, the next generation of St Anthony’s cricketers were busy practising bowling at a single stump. Aravinda Premarathne, a 15-year-old off spinner, said: “I want to play for Sri Lanka just like Murali.”

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