Sports

Sports

The way the cookie crumbles
Some years ago I was walking around the Nalanda College grounds with my friend Leslie Narangoda and he pointed out a tiny, frail boy giving fielding practices to a group of youngsters and said "That is Anura Ranasinghe and he is potential national stuff and I am sure that he is going to make the grade very soon". This he said about an under-- 14 player and by no means was my friend Leslie a soothsayer.

It was just that it was the talent which was prevalent in school cricket at that time. I am sure the same could have been said about Ranjan Madugalle, Arjuna, Aravinda, Roshan Mahanama, Asanka Gurusinghe, Marvan or Duleep Mendis. In short, from a very tender age, these cricketers showed the inborn maturity and talent and with no argument they went on to play national cricket with distinction.

Ironically a decade since Sri Lanka won the cricket World Cup the traditional cricket playing schools are failing in tandem to produce cricketers of quality or to instill any spectator interest in inter-school cricket. Gone are the days when an inter-school game drew crowds by the thousands. Not only present or old boys from the respective schools but cricket lovers in general coming to watch quality cricket or may be to watch Rumesh Ratnayake from St. Peter's coming to bowl at Arjuna Ranatunge at Ananda. In that era no one wanted to miss the chance of such a spectacle.

Arguably in recent times the only cricketer who walked into the national side straight from school from a traditional cricket playing school was Farveez Mahroof of Wesley.

What has happened to the rest of the schools?
Recently an senior coach who earlier had coached this traditional school, which was virtually a talent factory went back to the old school to resuscitate the falling standards. Alas! what he found out was depressing. The school was not interested in producing cricketers with talent anymore. It was prey to especially the mothers and fathers of talented or not cricketers who would not stop at any thing till they got their offspring into the first Xl. The coach tried to put a stop to this unhealthy trend, but, sadly he learned the entire machinery was against him., and to add to his woes the principal of the school with no proper cricketing background was the chief selector. Learning the bitter truth the coach retreated into oblivion. This is one of the major aspects of the present predicament. One cannot blame the children or the parents. They are doing what comes naturally to them. What should be blamed is the system that has let these miscreants get into the system and letting themselves be governed by them.

Then comes the next school of thought who say that with the present rat race in the educational system schoolboys, especially from the traditional cricket playing schools have no time to risk in sport, especially cricket. So they opt to do it the safe way whether they are talented or not and hide their heads in study books. At the same time one feels that if the other forces in school cricket are stronger and the most deserved do not get the right opportunity, the second option is the safest to see your way through to the future.

Then comes the other tangle in the web. Mushrooming all over the countryside are cricket schools. One can see every day schoolchildren by the thousands taken and brought back by their parents to and from these cricket coaching schools. The question can be posed at this juncture as to how these children by the thousand are going to benefit from attending these coaching classes?

There are times the name of the school comes under big names in the international or national scene. But, in reality the children are coached by some lowly grade one coach with only first Xl cricket as a background and with no versatility or knowledge of the game overlooking the unsuspecting children's interests in the middle.

Is this scenario helping the cause of cricket of a country which is sitting in the top half of world cricket at present? Now the cricketers from the cricket factories are slowly coming to a grinding halt. Are the cricket authorities aware of these factors? Positively they are. But, what are they doing about it? Are they setting up junior academies so that the children with natural flare get picked up before they are swallowed up by the vicious circle that is strangling the future of the game of cricket in the country.

The only silver lining is that the outstation supply stations have not got impeded by this anomaly so far. So far the smaller schools as we in Colombo call them play the game for the love of it and have become the major supplier to the national grid. One only hopes all these bad habits will not cascade into the rich talents of the outstations. But normally bad habits do.

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