Sports

Some say they relish taking the bull by its horns. But when they go to accomplish their mission without mastering the real art they generally end up as dead meat.

Last week it was melancholically funny the way the Sri Lanka Cricket president tried to take on the journalistic world. This is not the first time this individual has experimented on this rather irritating tactic. About a fortnight ago while giving an individual interview to a journalist on the development of junior cricket in Sri Lanka the SLC president suddenly exploded into a verbal tirade against local journalists but in the midst of it the said journalist opted to use his head and just managed to pick on the former’s brain to gather just enough info for his article.

Down the line there have been people and many of them – people of standing heading the fate of cricket in this cricket crazy island. At the same time all of them, from time to time, have called for press conferences and I can assure you not all pressmen waded through these press conferences without asking a side question and dumbly swallowing every word that the chair wanted to sell. However it must now be mentioned that this is the first time the press was subjected to such a tirade of verbal abuse from the chair itself.

Though still unofficial and a well known secret it’s election time at the SLC and both camps A and B are honing themselves for the gruelling tasks ahead. Suddenly the incumbent players have come alive to it for the first time as they are playing from a position of strength. Projects of various nature directed at taking the game of Cricket towards its desired goal keep on surfacing. At one time it was the ailing junior cricket in the island with the doctors gearing to impart the “kiss of life”. In the very next week Sri Lanka becomes a part of the World Cup hosting foursome for year 2011. In the next move the Tsunami hit Galle Stadium is invaded by a posse of mammoty wielding cricket administrators and politicians to give the injured giant a new lease of life, only to be confronted by the UDA as to who holds the authority to revamp this government owned piece of prime land in the heart of the Galle town. Who will win this race? Only father time holds the answer.

Then there was another twist of events recently that had taken the entire cricketing scenario in this country by storm and turned it topsy-turvy. A fortnight ago the president of the SLC made a statement that he was hoping to make a request to give the last selection committee a partial extension until they made the selections to the one-day international squad for the England tour. A week does not pass by, before two of the selectors including its chairman are given marching orders and instead a new chairman and another is brought in. Some say these orders of change came from a very high pedestal. However no sooner the new chairman of selectors sits he goes on another verbal tirade, but this was not against journalists, but the happenings in and around cricket. So much so that he accused the former selection committee of arm twisting former Sri Lanka skipper Sanath Jayasuriya into retiring and then accuses the national coach Tom Moody of being ineffective. Mind you everything is happening on the eve of a Test match while the team is going through rather a bad patch and are trying their level best to come to terms with conditions that are alien to them.

With an election around the corner happenings of this nature does not do any good to any incumbent ruling administration. Then to level the posing threat the administration is trying to get another member named into the selection committee. However from the names that were bandied around there is only one name that we could pick as a worthy nomination. Besides, knowing how important the votes are for the election, could this also be a ploy to buy some?

In conclusion – all these happenings only point to a very glaring truth. The truth is that there are square pegs in round holes in cricket everywhere. Right at the top of sports there is a minister who may not know much about the intricacies of the game and how important and vital the strategic appointments are to key positions. When the top is weak that weakness tends to cascade down to the very core of the issue.

In England they can say “God save the Queen! but here in Sri Lanka what do we have to say to save our cricket?