Captaining with cricket sense and nonsense

By Leonard Ratnayake

Some might call it a disaster. Not exactly, nevertheless, it might be the first step for a team building process around one man who had always been able to stand tall and high in defeat and victory. 

When Arjuna Ranatunga-led Sri Lanka took to the middle to defend a World Championship title in 1999 in 50-over cricket, he had world champions’ team with another three-years of cricketing experience added to their belts. Surprisingly, they were out-thrown in the first round and it was indeed a disaster.

Thus it was needed to adopt strict disaster management measures to completely overhaul the structure of Sri Lanka Cricket. This bore fruits as Sri Lanka became a strong outfit in years later hence becoming a consistent finalist of all the ICC tournaments until their second World Champion title in 2014 in 20-over cricket.

“Test cricket is education and T20 cricket is entertainment,” is what the 50-over cricket World Cup winning captain Ranatunga rightly had to say. Yes, certainly, a freaky wicket-taking over or a batting cameo by an individual could turn the result of the T20 cricket match.

T20 cricket is fascinating. It is a good spectacle where the spectators get the chance to grab the willow beaten leather ball more often than in other formats of cricket with consistent spectacular hard-hitting. When it is an ICC World Cup, the event is very much appealing. 

The fact that it is played in India makes it more exciting. It is like a much-awaited circus; and fittingly Sri Lanka had initially named a squad led by a clown-like captain in unworthy Lasith Malinga who was fortunate to take over the nominative captaincy role at the last stage of Sri Lanka’s victorious T20 World Championship in 2014.

Exactly, this was a disaster despite victory. Malinga might have been seen as a hero to come down the steps of the aircraft in 2014 with a borrowed plum of a world cup in hand, on the contrary this undeserving elevation to his permanent captaincy had created lot of nonsense and rift within the team. This was due to the flops in short-sighted cricket administration, where some cricketers who enjoyed the super-star status in the cricket loving country almost dictated terms to the administration to get their wishes done.

It is attention-grabbing to note that so-called one of the best of cricketing brains and strategists Mahela Jayawardena had asked for a complete restructuring process to Sri Lanka Cricket; at a time when he is paid to work as a consultant to England cricket team that ousted Sri Lanka from the tournament. 

Wonder why Mahela could not do such when he was within the team rather than occupying permanently to their preferred batting positions for records, thus negating the young and inexperienced the much-needed exposure to the pressure and the new ball. The same is valid to Kumar Sangakkara, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Sanath Jayasuriya as well.

Providentially, their predecessors Arjuna Ranatunga, Aravinda de Silva, Hashan Tillakeratne and Roshan Mahanama batted down the order to expose the talented young cricketers to experience the real pressure while they sat long to save the matches. Ranatunga faced many critics for shuffling Mahanama, Gurusinghe and Tillakeratne forcing some to retire prematurely, but this assured that Sri Lanka had a competitive team right-throughout. 

Thanks to the newly-elected cricket administration, the restructuring process had already begun boldly even a few days before a world cup tournament, where an ailing Lasith Malinga was asked to step down the captaincy. Unpatriotic he is, Malinga eventually refused to play and even to bowl four overs in a crucial match for Sri Lanka in a World Cup tournament, thus abandoning a tournament completely.

Nevertheless, the man standing tall in Sri Lanka Cricket, Angelo Mathews, a captain with cricketing sense and talented in all-round cricket, would now be free to build a team rallied around him with the expertise of cricketing greats who had come close and around the National Cricket Team. 

(Source: www.srilankasports.com.)