Cricket at its nadir; time for Sports Minister to act

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

With Sri Lanka cricket down in the doldrums following two back-to-back 2-0 whitewashes to South Africa (away) and England (home), many have expressed their opinions on how to turn things around and get back to winning ways.

On Monday night we heard former World Cup-winning captain and former MP Arjuna Ranatunga call on Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa to appoint an interim committee to clean the Augean stable and use his position to change the constitution of Sri Lanka Cricket, thereby clearing the path for people of genuine interest in cricket to come forward and contest elections and to administer cricket in the country.       

The Sports Minister should take an example from his father Mahinda Rajapaksa who, during his entire tenure in office as President of the country, ran Sri Lanka cricket with an interim committee. This coincided with Sri Lanka making it to five World Cup finals and winning one.

Past cricketers keep citing the structure of the domestic tournament as the cause of the national cricket team’s ills, but when you look at it quite deeply it has nothing to do with it. There is nothing wrong, if anything else, with our club tournament. For how many years have we produced world class cricketers throughout the club system?

We do not subscribe to this tournament structure being a scapegoat for all the shortcomings in other areas that warrant radical changes.

How on earth did we win Test status? It was with club tournaments. The club tournament in those days was of a high standard, and how you structure it is what matters today, like getting the cream of clubs to play in a Super tournament.

There are countries with far inferior domestic structures performing well at international level, take for instance a country like Afghanistan who don’t have a proper first-class cricket structure at all.

What the whole thing boils down to is the main weakness in our system – selection.

All you need to do is pick the right team, pick the right players and get the right batting order. That is the key. The batting order is like your vertebrae, you’ve got to have every link in the right place. If you don’t get your main link, which holds the entire vertebrae upright – which is technically the no. 3 position – everything else becomes of no use. Poor selection is the reason for Sri Lanka’s downfall and nothing else.

You don’t need cricket skills or to have played at a higher level to be a successful selector. Trevor Hohns, chairman of Australian cricket selectors, represented his country in only seven Test matches as a spin bowler – and what a fantastic record he has as a selector. Fast bowler Chetan Sharma, who picked the Indian team that beat the Aussies in the recently concluded Test series down under, played in 23 Tests in comparison to the Tendulkars and Gangulys, and Gavin Larsen, Chairman of New Zealand’s selection committee, played in only eight Tests. It is nothing to do with being an international player, rather the ability to spot talent – that is the key to being a successful selector.  

Former Sports Minister K.B. Ratnayake did a wonderful job bringing in the Sports Law, and all credit goes to him. The only thing he has not covered in the Sports Law is collusion between the executive and the administration. That is what is happening now.

In the absence of a complete purge from the top downwards you cannot put this right. Sri Lanka Cricket has disintegrated to a level beyond repair.

Unless the Sports Minister moves in and takes steps to make the radical changes that are required, it won’t be too long before his Ministry gets egg all over their face as a result of his inaction.