THE BIG PICTURE
The other bugbear is the virtual impasse created by a constitution that leaves little if any room for high calibre administrators and respected past cricketers to enter the fray – even if their track records are as clean as a whistle!
It is widely felt that our cricket establishment has sunk to new depths although we have witnessed occasions when politicking and political influence has ruled the roost in the past too. How else would anyone explain the selectors’ U-turn (in a matter of 24 hours and less than a week prior to the squad’s departure) from having reportedly asked the original captain to step down to deciding that he be retained?
A GENTLEMAN’S GAME? The furore – especially on what eventually became toxic social media – over how Sri Lanka picked its squad of 15 for the ongoing ICC Cricket World Cup, along with the hotly debated issue of the captaincy (not to mention the string of failures of the original captain himself), is a poor reflection of how the game that usually unites a nation can divide it.Indeed, cricket is Sri Lanka’s de facto national sport; and it’s run by the richest sports administration in the island, which perhaps is at the root of the shenanigans that have become commonplace today.
What this toing and froing also means is that Sri Lanka’s World Cup squad – and the eventual playing XI for the games that count – isn’t necessarily its best and players who have shone in recent times are either sitting on the bench or watching the matches at home like the rest of us.
So one of our premier brands – in the cricket playing world at the very least – continues to shrink in value; and the prestige that ‘Arjuna and the boys’ bestowed on a game that a cricket crazy island of 22 million people simply loves is being run to the ground under the storm clouds hovering above.
And like it seemingly is with the circus we call ‘politics,’ one wonders whether cricket’s rot has also spread too far to be treated.
– Editor-in-Chief
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