What goes around comes around

By Harsha Amarasinghe

The brave men and women marched through the roads in protest against the President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in what is turning out to be a staggering week. Sunday (03) the entire cabinet resigned following the island wide protests, and the Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa was one of the first to announce his resignation.
A couple of days before this, on April 1st, a date known for very smart people, then Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa, out of the blue, ‘temporarily suspended’ SLR and appointed an individual who has zero experience in rugby as the ‘competent authority.’ 

Having discovered an administrative blunder from two years ago, the former minister made no hesitation in trying to send SLR President Rizly Illyas home. 

It’s not a top secret that the Ministry of Sports gave very little support to SLR. Still they were able to bring rugby back after two years, when certain big name sponsors looked the other way during the most difficult times, SLR were able to find new sponsors for the national team and then the league tournament. In fact various parties wanted SLR to fail, so they thought blocking sponsors would prevent rugby from happening, but SLR started the tournament with no sponsors.

Broadcasting rights pumps money into sports. For instance, even lesser known teams in the English Premier League spend millions on players through the TV money. Previously, when someone from Sri Lanka or overseas watch inter club rugby via internet, the other organizations made big bucks, but now every single click on inter club rugby goes to SLR. The SLR boss made some very unpopular decisions in the best interest of rugby in Sri Lanka.
So, in return he was asked to go home on the 1st, but within a couple of days Minister of Sports himself had to go home. What goes around comes around.

Seeing Unseen Scenes

This week has also seen a lot of unseen scenes. For instance, SB Dissanayake was appointed as a Minister on March 3, and resigned on April 3. Johnston Fernando resigned as a minister on April 3 and appointed as a minister on April 4.

Meanwhile, the venue for a rugby match was changed so Rohitha Rajapaksa could play and then it was decided that the game would be played behind closed doors, so there is no pressure on the little Rajapaksa. These are the most unseen scenes in sports – changing venues to accommodate a bloke who is comfortably in the top ten worst-ever players to have played club rugby in Sri Lanka.

IPL & ‘Dew-proof Totals’

Over the years cricket has given its fanbase some brilliant terms. For instance ‘Superover’ or ‘DRS’ probably were unheard of during the good old days when batsmen like Sunil Gavaskar or Geoffrey Boycott tried blocking everything until the new ball lost its shine. 

In the recent years especially in the subcontinent, so many day/night limited overs matches were decided by the toss due to the dew factor. 

The chasing teams always find it easy to bat when there is dew as the ball tends to come onto the bat nicely and a wet ball is a nightmare for spinners. The 2011 Cricket World Cup was a classic example.

This was a trend that was well noticed during the early days of IPL 2022 as chasing teams had incredible success. With dew in mind, like water-proof mobile phones, the teams now tend to post ‘dew-proof totals.’ 

Greats such as Kumar Sangakkara, Younis Khan and Mike Hussey were successful anchoring the T20 innings and were recognized as crucial parts of their respective teams, but with dew being a serious fact, the teams now tend to pack their batting line-ups with hitters from top to bottom. Punjab Kings that Bhanuka Rajapaksa represents, is a prime example.