Cricket lovely cricket, how we mourn thy passing

On Thursday, a group of persons having watched the second Test at the Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC) grounds stood mournfully and sang “Nearer My God to thee”. A hymn normally sung at Christian funerals.
How appropriate is the comparison is the question.

The match was played on home ground. All members of the Sri Lanka national cricket team are familiar with the traits of the SSC wicket, having over the years played innumerable times during local tournaments before being picked to the national squad. 

Even those of us who follow the fortunes of the national team from the TV/radio/mobile phone side have heard our cricket commentators explain the devil in the grounds.

You play out the first session and the wicket plays perfect thereafter.

Having won the toss, as was to be expected the captain elected to bat first. What followed was a disaster. Even veterans like Angelo Mathews and Dinesh Chandimal perished to the Pakistani swing and spin attack, we could not but recall the feats of Hashan Tillakaratne.

Yet, we the spectators, were not afraid or disillusioned. Our bowlers would be able to exploit the conditions much better than the Pakistanis had done. Soon we would see a procession of Pakistani batsmen walk from the pavilion to the centre and back again to the pavilion...

O tempora, o mores. How much more wrong could we have been?

Instead, we witnessed the Pakistani batsmen treat our bowlers with complete disdain. A rookie Pakistani batsman scored a double century, another a century, and two others, half-centuries. The Pakistani skipper was so sure he could wrap up the series despite threatening rain, that he did not even bother to declare the innings closed until his fourth batsman reached his half-century.

They played our bowlers with such ease, one would have believed they were playing against, perhaps one of our weaker school elevens. Our fielding did not help either.

When we saw a bowler drop a catch off his own bowling, in our mind’s eye we were taken back, to the fielding exploits of Muttiah Muralitharan catching off his own bowling or the brilliance of a Roshan Mahanama in any part of the field.

We hung our heads in sadness for days gone by.

Not too long ago -at the ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of our World Cup triumph- our World Cup-winning captain spoke of corruption in cricket. He urged the then Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, that unless action was taken to address burning issues in the sport, cricket would suffer further.

Sadly, it appears we have kept our date with destiny.

A week or so ago the issue of alleged corruption at the highest level in cricket was raised in Parliament. The cricketing hierarchy days later (25 July), called a press conference to ‘clear’ its name. 

However, the very next day media reported the Auditor General himself speaking on Sri Lanka Cricket’s claim its hands were clean, saying the National Audit Office stood by its draft report on Sri Lanka’s tour of Australia for the 2022 T-20 World Cup.

Whatever those charges, there are also questions over selection to the national team and why particular players of international repute fail to find a selection to the national team.

One among these players who keep failing to get selected to the national team is one who had scored a test hundred on debut and has scored five more half-centuries in nine tests, according to media reports
Could it be that not belonging to a particular cricket club plays an important role in the eyes of national selectors?

Our World Cup-winning cricket captain raised questions about the formation of name-board cricket clubs to help particular individuals win positions of power in Sri Lanka Cricket’s hierarchy and the picking of particular players for the national team to gain votes.

Is this charge true today as well?

If alleged corruption is not cleaned up quickly via local corrective measures, Sri Lanka Cricket may be in danger of similar fate as some of our other sporting bodies who were suspended by international bodies.