Matters are not going to get any easier for Sri Lanka cricket. A second-string Indian team is due to tour Sri Lanka for a tour that includes three one-day internationals and three T20 internationals. One would have to be an eternal optimist or a fool to expect a different result.
That tour itself is a disgrace. Why would Sri Lanka invite a second-string Indian side to tour and give them parity of status with our national team when the ‘real’ Indian team is at the same time touring England, playing test cricket there?
What ails Sri Lanka cricket?
That seems to be the question on everyone’s mind after the drubbing our cricketers received in England losing five out of six games, their only saving grace being a washed out game which prevented an all-out whitewash.
Add to that ignominy, throw in the fact that three senior players were sent home in disgrace for breaching a bio-bubble and sneaking out to smoke cigarettes like some thrill-seeking teenagers leaving a school hostel surreptitiously instead of acting like the well-paid professional sportsmen they were supposed to be.
Matters are not going to get any easier either. A second-string Indian team is due to tour Sri Lanka for a similar tour- three one-day internationals and three T20 internationals- and one would have to be an eternal optimist or a fool to expect a different result.
That tour itself is a disgrace. Why would Sri Lanka invite a second-string Indian side to tour and give them parity of status with our national team, when the ‘real’ Indian team is at the same time touring England, playing test cricket there?
Tours by Indian teams always generate more money for Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) because they are associated with television rights. That is why this tour was readily agreed to by SLC, not because they were desperate for the money but because they were greedy for more money and were prepared to barter away a nation’s shame for just a few million Indian rupees more.
The fault-lines in SLC’s administration of the game have been evident for some time. The SLC is a virtual mafia, run by a well-known politician/businessman and his proxies, the latest incarnation being Shammi Silva. Whenever the businessman concerned is found incapable or ineligible to run for office in the SLC, he gets an acolyte to do so. Silva and another Silva, Mohan de Silva have done his bidding in the past.
The current set of SLC officials led by Silva were hauled before the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) in Parliament recently and couldn’t respond to the dozens of questions put to them. The COPE is headed by a government MP, Charitha Herath, who unearthed a maze of business deals that clearly lacked transparency and called in to question the integrity of the officials.
Following the decline in the fortunes of the national cricket team which had been a cause for concern for a few months now, there was hope that the newly appointed Minister of Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa would clean up the mess.
With much fanfare, Rajapaksa appointed two committees in March and April- a Cricket Management Committee headed by Professor Arjuna de Silva and a Technical Advisory Committee headed by former cricketer Aravinda de Silva. The members of the latter committee are respected cricketers: Roshan Mahanama, Muttiah Muralitharan and Kumar Sangakkara.
The persons appointed to these committees were of high integrity and professionalism and there was a hope that Rajapaksa is on the right track and that he would take the next obvious step: amend the Constitution of SLC and perhaps even appoint an Interim Committee until legal matters are sorted out. With elections to SLC due in May, 2021, there was genuine hope that there would be a change.
Alas, that was not to be. Those who were billed to contest Shammi Silva, withdrew at the eleventh hour- perhaps realising that their bid would be in vain- and the same, tired, old, incompetent men are at the helm of SLC again- and Sri Lanka’s cricket is slumping from bad to absolute bottom of the pile: even Afghanistan is now ranked higher, such are the depths to which we have sunk!
The reason is no big secret. It has been spelled out in public ad nauseum by past cricketers and administrators alike. Sri Lanka has a domestic cricket structure of more than two dozen cricket clubs which significantly lowers the standards of our first class tournament and encourages mediocrity. In comparison, Australia, a country with a comparable population has only six first-class teams.
Why is this encouraged? This is because each club has voting rights at SLC elections. So, the more clubs that are created with financial handouts being given to them, the more votes that can be canvassed at the SLC elections. And therein lies the secret behind the same lot getting re-elected over and over again!
Cricket is the only sport where Sri Lanka has reached world standards, sustained them over a period of time and gone on to become world champions. It did so with much less resources than the sport currently has, thanks to the blood, sweat and tears of men who played for their country, not the filthy lucre of quick money.
Now, thanks, to the colossal greed, mismanagement and corruption of a handful of few people who have links to those in high places, standards have plummeted to such an extent that Sri Lanka has become the laughing stock of the cricketing world. The sport is dying a slow death.
Minister Rajapaksa however continues to preside over this mess, without a whimper of protest. It appears that even he is unable to act against the mafia run by the businessman/politician and his proxies who have successfully burrowed their way in to the upper echelons of power even in this administration, cleverly switching loyalties from the Maithripala Sirisena camp to the Rajapaksa camp when power changed hands at the last presidential elections.
Being the youngest of the Rajapaksas in the Cabinet- there will soon be five of them- this is Namal Rajapaksa’s first ministerial portfolio. An outstanding ruggerite in his younger days, the Youth Affairs and Sports portfolio is appropriate for him, despite criticism that it was his family ties and not merit that got him the job. It is now up to him to show that he can perform.
If he doesn’t- and so far, he hasn’t- he will go down in history as the Minister of Sports who presided over the demise of cricket in Sri Lanka, just as much as Gamini Dissanayake is remembered as the man who put Sri Lanka cricket on the world map by obtaining ‘test’ status.
Surely, that wouldn’t look good on the political CV of someone who someday presumably wants to be more than just a minister!
