From Islandcricket.lk
Sri Lanka's outgoing selection panel was responsible for
many peculiar selections and unusual omissions during their tenure, and a
recent interview with a former selector, Pramodya Wickramasinghe, has provided
much needed insight into their actions, which lacked any sense of intelligence.
Upul Tharanga, an experienced opening batsman with 13 ODI
tons, was allocated just five ODI matches in all of 2014 because he supposedly
has a weakness outside off stump. Tharanga was not good enough because of an
issue with his technique, according to the former selectors.
Tharanga's replacement, Kusal Perera, failed miserably
despite repeated opportunities. How is his technique? Perera's repeated
failures has not been connected to a technical issue — why is that?
Interestingly, the selectors seem to suggest that they know
plenty about batting technique and other coaching aspects, enough to not give
players a fair opportunity to perform and prove their worth. Wickramasinghe,
who reportedly has earned a reputation for being a thug, and the former chief
selector Sanath Jayasuriya could focus on coaching jobs next. Would you hire
them as coaches?
The claim that any batsman with as many centuries as
Tharanga needed to be sidelined because of a weakness outside off stump should
be ridiculed. It is an unacceptable excuse, especially when the selectors
experimented and failed with a number of openers in ODIs yet could not provide
Tharanga with more opportunities, and all because of their biased and distorted
personal views of his technique. They gambled with their opening combination
even at the World Cup 2015 quarter-final when they turned to Perera again,
giving him another chance to open and bizarrely pushing Lahiru Thirimanne down
the order.
The number of absurd decisions taken by this panel are many.
Soon after they took over, they chose to deprive Angelo
Mathews of captaincy in all formats and appointed Dinesh Chandimal T20 captain.
They axed Chandimal from the T20 side and stripped him of captaincy not long
after. They chose to discard the player that they had felt was good enough to
captain Sri Lanka at the World T20 in the middle of that tournament. Not only
did they appoint a player who was not a regular in the T20 side as captain, but
they changed captains in the middle of the T20 World Cup. Then, how can one
forget the decision to pick Dimuth Karunaratne for the 2015 World Cup squad,
which appeared to be entirely based on one knock — Karunaratne's Test century
against New Zealand. That too was an embarrassing failure.
Apart from this, Wickramasinghe also admits in his chat with
the Sunday Times in Sri Lanka that Jayasuriya's selection panel discarded a
fast bowler from the national set up because the selectors felt he was
"faking injuries".
There is a fast bowler who is among the wickets and is
alleged to be faking injuries Wickramasinghe said. "When we found that
out, we kept him out. He was out of the side for a while because of that
reason. Then Sanath had a chat with him and brought him back.
"That is not the only instance, there have been several
cases of this nature where we intervened and straightened things out."
One can only hope that the selectors relied on more than
their perception to come to such conclusions. They could well have deprived Sri
Lanka of a bowler that the team needed badly, simply because they felt he was
"faking" an injury.
The dimwits the corrupt politicians from the previous regime
picked as selectors lived in a bubble and got away with anything — even the
selection of politicians' sons to national squads. Former cricketer Hashan
Tillakaratne, a politician now and a selector in the previous panel, was able
to see his son play for Sri Lanka Under-19, while the former defence spokesman
and later media and information minister Keheliya Rambukwella's son too made it
into preliminary World Cup squads.
Advising the new selectors in his recent interview,
Wickramasinghe also insinuated that there is no quality talent in Sri Lanka to
replace the retiring seniors. Only Angelo Mathews, according to Wickramasinghe,
can hold a permanent place in the side amongst the junior players. And in a
post-World Cup press conference recently, former chief selector Jayasuriya
blamed Sri Lanka's inability to qualify for a World Cup final for the first
time since 2007 on fitness. The former selectors have left Sri Lankan cricket
in a mess and are making farcical excuses these days to cover up their incompetence.
There is plenty of talent in Sri Lanka. What Sri Lanka has
been deprived of is competent individuals to manage that talent.
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