In the history of Sri Lankan cricket, 2018 without doubt was the toughest year. The reputation of Sri Lankan cricket took a severe beating both on and off the field.
On the field, we saw Sri Lankan cricket deteriorating and devaluating faster than the Rupee. The instances where the batting collapsed were far greater than the collapse of the Rupee. Last year Sri Lanka lost to Bangladesh four times and to add insult to injury Afghanistan taught them some bitter lessons in Abu Dhabi. The least said about Sri Lanka’s overall performances in white ball cricket the better it is. No surprise that they have failed automatic qualification for the T-20 World Cup in Australia next year.
Read More : Will Ashantha De Mel fix Sri Lanka’s fielding woes?
In sports you win some and lose some. That’s part and parcel of the game. But what is more worrying is the constant corruption charges brought against Sri Lankan cricket. Last year, three former cricketers were charged and two of them are provisionally suspended from all cricketing activities. There are concerns that more names could come out in the next of couple of months and Alex Marshall – ICC Anti Corruption General Manager – claims that young players are the most vulnerable is of serious concern.
At a time when Sri Lankan cricket had plenty of problems to deal with came the ball tampering saga in the Caribbean. Now, first of all, do you actually need to alter the condition of the ball to beat this West Indian side? Secondly, with some 20 cameras covering a cricket match, whom are you trying to fool?
Initially Sri Lanka denied demanding the ICC to back their claims with evidence. The moment the evidence was put out, you would have thought that the Sri Lankans would eat humble pie and back out. But they went onto contest the charges and didn’t realize that they were fighting a losing battle.
Read More : Cricket needs Chandrishan back badly
Captain Dinesh Chandimal ended up earning a lengthy seven match ban. Both Chandimal and Head Coach Chandika Hathurusinha cut poor figures after the incident. No one is willing to buy Chandimal’s story that he was indeed having a sore throat and what was in his pocket were Strepsils.
Ball tampering was bad but the worse was to follow as Chandika Hathurusingha decided to play god and held up play for three hours. The observations made by Judicial Commissioner Michael Beloff, QC are quite damaging.
The episode soured Sri Lanka’s relations with West Indies Cricket Board and the International Cricket Council. Chandimal, Hathurusingha and Team Manager Asanka Gurusinha were lucky that the mild mannered Javagal Srinath was the Match Referee.
Hathurusingha had commanded the respect of the public and people backed him to the hilt although they didn’t agree with some of the decisions he had made. But ball tampering and subsequent hold of play was the last straw as he lost supporters faster.
So did Dinesh Chandimal. The public were firmly behind him and took on one of the legends of Sri Lankan cricket Sanath Jayasuriya when he dropped Chandimal from white ball cricket. People saw Chandimal as a leader, someone who had come up in life the hard way and as an example to all aspiring cricketers. He also had shown that he had the strength to demand discipline from his charges taking the team forward. But in West Indies he let us down badly and a cheat has no business leading the country.
Read More : Much to learn from an unsung hero
The staying of the cricket elections by the Appeal Court in May last year virtually ensured more power to the Head Coach and he misused it. Once the elections were stayed, the Minister of Sports should have gone and appointed an Interim Committee.
Instead, he appointed his Secretary as the Competent Authority and bought time from the ICC to put structure back in place at SLC.
The promised transformations weren’t introduced to the administration and furthermore Sri Lankan cricket suffered new lows. SLC is still in the process of recovering millions of rupees that were transferred to an offshore account in September last year. Another scam to siphon millions of US$ was saved just in time by vigilant employees of SLC. These were the money that television companies owed SLC. Had an Interim Committee been in place, in the absence of an Executive Committee, there would have been more checks and balances in place and these financial abuses would have been avoided.
Fielding was a real headache and it was due to poor fielding the team made an early exit in the Asia Cup and failed to book a berth in the finals of Nidahas Trophy.
Slow over rates were a big problem in 2018 and there seem to be few plans to address the issue. It doesn’t auger well when the team starts 2019 with another slow over rate offence. Interesting times are ahead indeed.
