The darkest era of our cricket

by Rex Clementine

Sri Lankan cricket has become the laughing stock in the world.

Gone are the days when we used to have world’s number one ranked batsman and number one ranked bowler. Our spinners aren’t capable anymore to humble world’s formidable batting line-ups. Gone are the days our teams used to adapt so well in alien conditions. Gone are the days when we were by far Asia’s best fielding unit.

Instead, we are dealing with negative headlines day in and day out. Our leading curator is banned for failing to cooperate with an International Cricket Council inquiry. One of our most talented young batsmen is facing a lengthy ban for breaching the anti-doping rules. Our finest cricketers are hauled up before the Financial Crimes Investigation Department (FCID). This must be the worst phase of Sri Lankan cricket.

Then, our cricket has hit new lows. We are ranked just above West Indies and Bangladesh in Test cricket while New Zealand’s second string sides are beating us with plenty to spare in ODIs and T-20s. Despite fielding standards dropping alarmingly, our cricketers spend more time playing football during training sessions than fine tuning their catching and throwing skills. The team’s management is not strong enough to remind the players of priorities.

If you were to analyze the reasons for today’s problems, you will come across certain interesting ones. Poor judgment and lack of discipline are two things that have hurt our cricket.

We Sri Lankans not only let our premier fast bowler choose which format he wants to play, then we go and appoint him captain too. That was not the only instance of poor choices. Among the members who sat on the last Interim Committee was an individual who had many allegations against him. Jayananda Warnaweera stepped down from the Interim Committee last year amidst pressure and earlier this week was handed a lengthy suspension by the ICC. We Sri Lankans are very good in choosing arsonists to be firefighters!

Rangana Herath is one of our most honourable cricketers. When he was approached to underperform during the West Indies series, he did the right thing by reporting the approach to the ICC Anti Corruption Unit. The matter should have ended then and there as the ICC’s Anti Corruption arm is a sophisticated one where culprits can find no loopholes. But instead, our politicians made a mess by reporting the incident to the FCID.

Headlines such as ‘cricketers grilled by FCID’ have built up a negative image on respected cricketers like Herath and Angelo Mathews. Spare a thought to the Sri Lankan captain. He has already plenty of stuff to deal with and the last thing he wants is to spend four hours at the FCID.

The cricket establishment has failed miserably to maintain top levels of discipline. There were many reports of national cricketers skipping the team bus and using private transport to matches. Sri Lanka Cricket repeatedly turned a blind eye to breach of discipline and corrective measures at right time could have helped us to nip things in the bud.

There are also questions asked as to how the team management and SLC’s Security Officer failed to detect this individual called Gayan Vishwajith, who is alleged to have offered 10million rupees each to the two cricketers to underperform. Pictures of this individual having meals with leading Sri Lankan cricketers went viral last week.

Images that went viral last week is given below:- (Images with courtesy from LankaEnews - Mr Sandaruwan Senadheera)