Sports

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Musings in Wonderland
By S.R. Pathiravithana
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here." –
On top is a quote from the Lewis Caroll classic Alice in Wonderland. Well… what has that got to do with sport or to be more precise cricket? Ironically this is exactly what I intend taking you through during the next few minutes that I am going waste of your life time.

In this intricate era where everything that is material and unreal is sucked into a huge black-hole like machine and then churned into nice chunks of cents, rupees, pennies, pounds and dollars the game of cricket has become a mere tool where nobody cares from where it comes from and to where it goes to.

Last morning while talking to Sri Lanka’s champion spin wizard Muttiah Muralitharan he explained as to what pressure is now building within the national team as a result of the feeder points into it are slowly but surely running dry. He said as a result of the standard of cricket in the school and the club arena diluting new quality talent graduating onto the international stage is in the vein. As a result of this intolerable situation the Sri Lankan top order is under tremendous pressure to score every time they walk on to the batting crease.It’s of no use to keep on moaning about ills that is prevalent in the realms of the game. But, it is wiser to ‘don’ the Sherlock Holmes gear and inch step by step trying to ascertain as to where we have gone wrong and find the necessary remedies for the ailment. But the million dollar question is if the incumbent administrators earnestly want to make the necessary changes and put the gasping giant back on its feet?

To my mind the biggest wrong doer in this episode is the prevalent system that has been governing the administration of the game running back to the past decade and a half or may be a little more. Over the years it has been the unscrupulous far thinking exploiters who has been seeking the seats of these so called clubs and other vote bearing sectional bodies (there may be an odd honest person among this lot and this lot he certainly does not belong to the category that I am talking about). These exploiters do know that their vote is very powerful and at the same time they can convert themselves from being Mr. Nobodies to… he is “Mr. So…and….so”. At the same time these persons also know that it is only as long as they occupy those seats that they will remain to be the Mr. So and So, because in the real world he may be a Mr. Nobody in its true sense. So they do intend on holding on to those posts as long as the time and the circumstances permit them to.

The crux of the matter lies here. At this point another carnivore in the deer park comes to surface. They are the greedy administrators who would stoop down to any level just to catch their prey to come into power. Then the wheels of misfortune begin to turn. The greedy administrator knows for him to gain power he has to exploit the exploiter. Then in turn the exploiter knows that as long he keeps the greedy man on the pedestal he gets his share of the crumbs and so the wheels of misfortune keeps turning in perfect harmony.
Then in this mad melee one finds the Crying Hyenas. Like the Laughing Hyenas in the Jungle these Crying Hyenas in the concrete jungle generally do not and can not dabble with the king of the jungle. Generally the Laughing Hyenas satisfy themselves by devouring leftovers of the carcasses, but, in the concrete jungles the Crying Hyenas go behind the politicians who generally are quite oblivious to the happenings in the hallowed halls of cricket, suddenly wake up to the moans of this other kind and chase out the greedy lions and then install some stooges of their own on the pedestal. But, what happens here is that from bad experience the administration goes to the hands of another unholy alliance.

What is the ultimate result of this unfortunate episode? The people who really do care about the game, the people who really do possess the wherewithal to guide the game to its real path are left on the side walk forever converting them into a pack of unheard voices forever. These third “People” are the real people who can help the game. But they are people of integrity and backbone who will not stoop down to the levels of some others to barge through the doors of power because it holds other carrots than cricket itself.

As a result of this sad state of affairs-- who has been at the butt-end? Sadly it is nothing but the game of cricket. May be through the last decade or so while the individuals have been striving to assert authority over the game and its fate, the very base of the game has been cracking and crumbling under sheer pressure and under circumstances which is much more complex than a mundane man could comprehend.

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