Sri Lanka Cricket at sixes and sevens
Have the alarm bells been sounded on Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC)? This is the question millions of cricket fans will want answers to. Irrespective of how the team will perform on the upcoming tour of England, the bureaucrats running the game in the “Permanent Committee” posing as an interim one, have messed up so much that cricket has become more about making money than playing the game well.
That captain Kumar Sangakkara quit his role just two days after the World Cup followed by vice captain Mahela Jayewardena and the four-member selection committee throwing in the towel, only goes to show that the interim committee headed by D.S. de Silva and secretary Nishantha Ranatunga are living on borrowed time. The SLC, which was described as the most corrupt in the country by former sports minister C.B. Ratnayake in the presence of local and international journalists, must be among most privileged public institutions in the world to carry on in the face of debacles and resignations, perhaps causing more embarrassment to the people who installed them undemocratically.
If purists cry out that the 1996 World Cup triumph was what paved the way for corruption to set in, a worst scenario has now been created with the Indian Premier League (IPL) further corrupting the system. Some of the players had openly said on Indian television that they were in an uncomfortable position to play in the World Cup final against India and then having to go back to their second and more lavish employer the IPL six days later.
Is this not enough to hold a full inquiry into the conduct of some of the players who are currently part of the Sri Lanka team and those who have retired with an eye on the IPL. But will any inquiry succeed?
It is no secret that the Rajapaksa regime procured the services of several Sri Lankan players to coax voters on its behalf at the last presidential election. It was a case of payback time for the players and with Sports Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage demanding that members of the Sri Lanka team abort the IPL and return to prepare for the England tour; no further proof is required as to the depth to which the establishment has fallen.
Given the relationship that Sri Lankan players have cultivated with the Rajapaksa regime, it appears that Minister Aluthgamage is like a batsman without a bat as the players may be just a telephone call away from settling the issue and hurling a bouncer at the sports boss.
Unfortunately for cricket, its most vocal crusader -- Arjuna Ranatunga has been written off the scorebook of the Rajapaksa regime because of his political affiliations. Little or nothing of what he says will be taken seriously. Now being a politician, we don’t hold a bat for Ranatunga who also thrived in the interim committee not so long ago. But we agree with his warning given recently on local television where he said Sri Lanka might end up like Zimbabwe given the extent to which cricket in Sri Lanka has been politicized. Last Monday Ranatunge warned that an ill-prepared Sri Lanka team in crisis faced the danger of getting thrashed in test series in England and might thus not find a place in next year’s World Test Championship.
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