Our story could be about the three sisters of Colombo, each more gorgeous than the other.
They’ve won no beauty pageants, having never felt the need to enter such crass competitions. They aren’t rich by any measure that an accountant could figure from a balance sheet. They’re different in every way possible, each envious of something the other has; yet this diversity is the only reason they thrive together.
We speak of the three international cricket grounds in a city that is officially listed as straddling only 14 square miles.
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The R Premadasa Stadium, famously built on a swamp in the decidedly edgy neighbourhood of Maligawatte, is the favourite among three daughters, as far as the Sri Lankan cricket board is concerned. The RPS, or Khettarama, as it is known among locals, has hosted a World Cup semifinal, and when the bright lights are turned on for a big game, the president of the country usually puts in an appearance. It’s another matter that after the game, when midnight has given way to the wee hours, even my most adventurous Sri Lankan friends don’t stop their cars or bikes in the bylanes of Maligawatte, in the off chance that the non-cricket-loving residents are up at a late hour.
The Sinhalese Sports Club ground, in the rather more genteel Cinnamon Gardens locale of Colombo 7 – you know a city is tiny when it has only 15 postal codes – was born with a silver spoon in its mouth. The home of the Sinhalese Sports Club since 1952, it was once a Second World War aerodrome used by the Allied Forces. Considered the Lord’s of Sri Lanka, it hosted the Sri Lanka team’s first international game – against an Indian XI in 1974 – as well as its first official One-Day International, against England in 1982. To walk around the ground is to be reminded of Sri Lanka’s cricket history. The club has won the Premier Trophy – the only first-class silverware that counts – a record 31 times, and its ranks have included the most famous surnames in the country’s cricketing history: Mendis, Dias, Ranatunga, de Mel, Wettimuny, Atapattu and Jayawardene.
While on your tour of the most intimate cricket capital in the world, if you do tear yourself away from the SSC, you would make your way to the P Saravanamuttu Stadium – or P Sara Oval – in Borella. Home of the Tamil Union Cricket and Athletic Club, and the venue of Sri Lanka’s first Test match in 1982, it is the smallest – and most quaint – of Colombo’s three active international venues. Most well known for hosting Don Bradman’s 1948 Invincibles on their way to England, P Sara Oval is much more than a stage on which a famous band once played. Tamil Union, for whom history’s most prolific offspinner, Muttiah Muralitharan, turned out, was also home to Mahadevan Sathasivam. Garry Sobers once called Satha “the greatest batsman ever on earth”, but he played his cricket from the 1940s through to the1960s, at a time when the country was not represented internationally. He is widely believed to have put Sri Lanka on the global cricket map long before administrators and politicians thought such a thing possible.
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If this tiny – yet undeniably fertile – cricketing patch can comfortably accommodate three sisters, surely it should be big enough for the country’s first family of cricket: four brothers who played for Sri Lanka?
This piece could just as well be about Ruwan Ranatunga, the 43-year-old United People’s Freedom Alliance representative from Gampaha in the Sri Lankan parliament. What makes Ruwan interesting – although there must be much more than this – is that he is the only one of six brothers bearing Sri Lankan cricket’s most storied surname not to have given the bat and ball game a serious go. But stories are seldom written about what people do not do.
When Ruwan was born, on October 20, 1971, it was into a family that, to put it mildly, had cricket in its blood. Dammika, the eldest son of Reggie Ranatunga, was born in 1962 and was followed by Arjuna, Nishantha, Prasanna and Sanjeeva – all of whom would take to the game naturally, before Ruwan came along and wanted nothing to do with cricket.
Of the brothers who did play the game, Prasanna was a handy schoolboy cricketer – which means more in Sri Lanka than in elsewhere in the world – but the least accomplished of the lot. Nishantha played only limited-overs cricket, missing out on Tests, which puts him next in the pecking order. Sanjeeva managed two tons from 22 ODIs, and Dammika was picked for just one Test series.
The name Ranatunga is well enough known internationally, not least because Arjuna defied the odds to take his team to glory in the 1996 World Cup, and was the first of the four brothers to play for Sri Lanka. Through the decade in which he captained Sri Lanka in 56 Tests, Arjuna would have the pleasure of welcoming three of his brothers into the fold: Dammika, a stodgy opening batsman, elder to Arjuna by a year and 105 days, made his Test debut against Australia in 1989; Nishantha did not bat and picked up 1 for 33 in the first of two his ODIs, against Zimbabwe in 1993; Sanjeeva, a left-hand bat like his more accomplished elder brother, was good enough to make two hundreds against Zimbabwe and register scores of 65 and 60 in a Test against Mark Taylor’s Australians in Adelaide. Ranjit Fernando, that long-suffering Sri Lankan cricket commentator, believes Sanjeeva would have played a lot more, had he not walked out to bat each time with critics insisting he was only in the team because of his elder brother.
Currently, Dammika is the only cricketing Ranatunga not involved with the game. But then, he had a full innings, following up his playing days with several key positions in the cricket board, the highest of which was chief executive. Arjuna, now a senior politician with the Democratic National Alliance, a party he joined in 2010, has exhausted all possibilities within the board, occupying the position of president until 2008.
Nishantha is the secretary of SLC. He was CEO of Carlton Sports Network, the channel owned by son of the Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, when it was awarded broadcast rights to all cricket played in Sri Lanka in 2011 – culminating in several conflict of interest allegations. Compared to his more fiery brother Arjuna, Nishantha is soft-spoken, and has chosen for himself a place in the corporate world, but those who know the Ranatungas well insist he was most ideally suited of all to a life in politics. The manner in which he has managed to stay in power at the cricket board (he was elected unopposed in the last election) through various interim bodies, power shifts and allegations of wrongdoing, is testimony to his diplomatic ability.
Sanjeeva, the most charming of the brothers, and youngest of the cricketing brood, wears at least three hats – something of a recurring theme with the Ranatunga men. Sanjeeva works for Maharajas, a company run by SL Raja Mahendran, widely believed to be the richest man in Sri Lanka. He is also director of sports at Sirasa TV and owns the P&A insurance company. Sanjeeva’s channel is known for hard-hitting stories and he himself asks some particularly awkward questions of Sri Lanka’s cricketers at press conferences. There are times when his channel will attack the cricket board, or at least factions of it, despite Nishantha holding the key operational role in the organisation.
As for Prasanna, there might be times when he thinks wistfully about whether he might have taken the game more seriously, but as chief minister of the Western Province, a post he has occupied since 2009, he has little time for idle daydreaming.
Ultimately though, all stories about the Ranatungas boil down to one man.
To meet Arjuna, I drove to Nugegoda, the Colombo suburb that was just a village not long ago. As you drive out of the main city, through ever-narrowing roads and densely packed markets – one of which saw a 2007 bomb blast kill at least 25 civilians and injure more than twice as many, believed to be the handiwork of the Lankan Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – you see the price for progress being paid on a daily basis. Where there were once paddy fields, green, easy on the eye and lush, there are now haphazard shopping arcades.
A flyover has eased the congestion on the drive in from town, but the pace of life visibly slows when you turn off the arterial road leading to Arjuna’s residence. The plots are large, the bungalows old, and the money of the inhabitants older still.
Arjuna’s home is spacious and comfortable without being obviously ostentatious; from the outside, the only sign of an important person living there is a garage full of SUVs with government licence plates. Enter the living room, and you see this is a man who loves cricket more than anything in the world. Trophies galore, man-of-the-match awards, photographs – if anybody needed reminding that this was the home of a cricketer rather than a politician, there it was.
“When I finished playing my first Test match, my first thought was that I’d now have to go back to school, to study and to play cricket,” says Arjuna, who made an impressive enough 43 in a trial limited-overs game to join the likes of Bandula Warnapura, Duleep Mendis, Roy Dias, Ajit de Silva and Lalith Kaluperama in the squad for the country’s first-ever Test.
“I was the only left-hand middle-order batsman around who had scored runs consistently, so I got a look-in,” says Arjuna, somewhat modestly. He went on to make 54 in his maiden innings as Sri Lanka lost a match they had controlled for the first three days. “I used to score heavily in schools cricket, our equivalent of club cricket, but there was a huge gap from there to international cricket. And I was only 18. It was our first Test match, and though we had quality, everything was new to us.”
However, Arjuna was a fast learner. “I had never experienced international cricket, and I had no option but to play it like any other school game. Only after the Test match did I realise that it was a totally different ball game,” says Arjuna. “In schools cricket, I had enough shots to score freely. At the Test level, you get loose balls much more rarely. You have to wait. And this doesn’t come naturally when you’re a teenager. Also, in a school game, if you get dropped early, you can still go on and make a big one. In Tests, one mistake, and you’re back in the dressing-room.”
After his Test debut, Arjuna went straight back to playing for his school and, fortunately for him, the runs flowed, ensuring selection for the tour to Pakistan. “That was the first time I realised the importance of planning and preparation. When you are a schoolboy, you play the game for fun. You watch people on TV and those days, it was the West Indies. They always looked like they were having fun,” he says. “But, once you play Tests, you know that more needs to be done. We really did not know much about training then. We used [fitness] instructors from the army, navy and air force… these really strict, serious guys who made us run laps, do push-ups, that sort of thing. But that’s not what you need for cricket.”
When Arjuna agrees to an interview, it is with much grace, but as the questions slip out, you realise this is anything but a conversation. You are just the audience. And you can ask what you please, and repeat some questions over and over, but you will never be in control, as much as he allows you to think you are. Playing the recording back later, I realise how astutely Arjuna steers, nudges, prods, and deflects – much like his batting – this interaction to the places he wants it to go.
He does not like to talk too much about footwork, back-lift, head position or any of the other catchphrases modern coaches and gurus swear by. But, tickle him about Sri Lanka’s 1996 World Cup win and he opens up. “The planning for that started in 1994 when Gamini Dissanayake was the board president. He would always tell me, ‘This series is important, but think about the 1996 World Cup.’ In Australia, in 1995 when Murali was called for chucking, that was a big moment. It was usually hard to bring the team together and keep them that way, but the Murali incident brought us close like nothing else before. I’ve said this before: the Murali incident was very difficult to handle, completely unfair to a champion bowler, but also a blessing in disguise.”
So, at what point did Sri Lanka believe they could go all the way? “I think we really started to believe we could win the World Cup when we beat India in Delhi [during the group games]. India had made a big score, Aravinda [de Silva] did not get runs, and we still beat India in India. After the match, Ravindra Pushpakumara, the youngest member of the squad, asked me, ‘Aiyya, don’t you think we can win this World Cup?’ I said ‘No, no, don’t even talk about it,’ but he was insistent, saying if we can beat India in India, we can win the World Cup. I asked him to broach the topic at the team meeting. Everyone sort of agreed, but the seniors pointed out that we have a ladder to climb. ‘Let’s take the ladder, let’s not think of taking the lift’ was the consensus.
“To win without Aravinda contributing – that gave us a lot of confidence. We all had different roles, everyone knew what his role was and everyone was perfect at his job. In that sense, it was very easy for me to handle the team. We had five senior cricketers – Aravinda, Roshan [Mahanama], Hashan [Tillakaratne], Asanka [Gurusinha] and myself. I always said those were my five fingers. The senior group – all except Aravinda – used to control the other guys. Aravinda, we just wanted him to be happy. Whatever you want, we will give you. Just get us a hundred – that was the plan.”
The plan, of course, worked like magic.
Ask Arjuna about his combative nature and he puts it down to his genes. “My father could never keep quiet if he saw something wrong happening. If he felt there was some injustice, he would fight without thinking twice about the consequences. I think I got that from him,” he says. “Like every son, I admired my father. He was my hero. I always thought, if I could be a fraction of the man he was, I would have done well in my life.”
But, despite all his achievements, Sri Lanka’s most admired cricketer believes he did not do enough. “I got four hundreds each in Tests and ODIs. When my 10-year-old daughter asked me how I played for 20 years and only got eight hundreds, I feel like telling her ‘See how many crucial 80s and 90s I got.’ But it doesn’t work that way.”
Arjuna’s career overlapped significantly with Aravinda’s but when you suggest that the two were rivals for the public’s affection, Arjuna gently disagrees. “Aravinda came from a different background. He was given his first car when he was 16. His family wanted nothing for him but to be a cricketer. The way he read length early, no Sri Lankan batsman has come close. People today talk about Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara and try to compare them to Aravinda. It’s not even worth talking about. When everyone else struggled, Aravinda scored. That is class.”
If Arjuna regrets not making more international hundreds, that’s a minor irritant to him in comparison to more contemporary peeves. Not long ago, invited to be the guest of honour at a school match, he delivered a stinging slap to a kid who played the Dilscoop. “First you have to learn to play cricket, no?” Arjuna said, before launching into a diatribe against Twenty20 cricket. “This T20 stuff is about power. It’s about slogging. It’s entertainment. You don’t need real skill to be a good T20 player. A bit of natural talent, some strength and you can do well. I’m not saying anyone should not play T20. But if kids only play T20 style, cricket will die. Until someone is at least 19, he should not play this kind of cricket.”
If the playing of the shortest version of the game stirs rage, the biggest tournament in that format, the Indian Premier League, inspires undisguised contempt. “In my opinion, the IPL has not given anything good to Indian cricket or world cricket. From the start, the tournament is in the news for betting, fixing allegations, alcohol, drugs, parties … If anything, the IPL has given Indian cricket a bad name in the world. I don’t know of one quality player that India has got through the IPL. Do you want guys like Gavaskar and Tendulkar and Dravid or not? They come through the correct system, not the IPL. What is the need for a tournament like this, if not simply TO MAKE MONEY?”
Being a successful politician, it comes as no surprise that Arjuna believes the Indian cricket board should come under government regulation. “Like in Sri Lanka, if the government oversees things, many of these things could have been avoided. The BCCI should not be above scrutiny.” But, why should a Sri Lankan legend have such strong views on how India run their game?
Over the years, Sri Lanka – and before that Ceylon – looked to their big brother across the Palk Straits to not merely give them a leg-up, but to embrace their cause on the world stage. The MJ Gopalan Trophy, a first-class tournament contested between Madras (now Tamil Nadu) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) from 1952, was a classic example of just how such a partnership could work. But today, in the era of the Big Three v the Small Seven, there exists no such spirit of co-operation.
For too long, SLC have staved off bankruptcy through back-room machinations with the BCCI. For too long, the BCCI have disrespected the SLC, simply because they run the game in a market that is desperately small.
Arjuna has given up on India entirely. “When we were growing up, we were encouraged to look up to India. As youngsters, we always thought, and were shown, see how India is doing something,” says Arjuna. “Today, we have nothing to learn from India.”
Just when you think he’s a politician playing to his gallery, you remember to ask for his thoughts on how the great game is run in Sri Lanka. “I don’t know whether the SLC has any vision at all,” says Arjuna, fully aware that his brother’s hand steers that ship. “We never look properly at the long term. We have spent billions building stadiums in unwanted areas and in the process are bankrupting the national board.”
While some of these statements are decidedly political – and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that he’s referring to the Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium in Hambantota – it’s hard to see how these words won’t hurt the SLC secretary, Nishantha.
When the recent ICC reorganisation left all the power in the hands of India, England and Australia, Nishantha was the epitome of pragmatism. While the SLC offered guarded opposition to the move – and covered themselves by saying any support would have to be backed by a meeting of their own stakeholders – they changed their stance at the earliest possible instance. “People who talk about principles will not give us the money,” said Nishantha, who might have been seen as taking a potshot at his elder brother and one-time mentor – Arjuna Aiyya.
But Sri Lanka does not work like that. Colombo is its biggest city but it may as well be a village. When it comes to cricket, it’s not even a village; it’s a family.
“Everywhere around the world, people think the Ranatunga brothers don’t get along,” says a senior cricket journalist who has covered some of the Ranatungas’ careers since the start. “But it’s no different from your family or mine. At home, we may squabble every day, but if someone from outside says something about my brother, I’ll bloody well see how the bugger gets away.”
And when I – an Indian and a rank outsider – try to talk to any of the Ranatunga brothers about another, I see this. You will be shut down before you can ask the first meaningful question.
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Post-independence, Sri Lanka has endured many political dynasties. From the Senanayakes to the Bandaranaikes to the Rajapaksas, the nation has struggled, faltered, grown, stumbled and eventually thrived.
In cricket, the age of the Ranatungas may be behind us soon enough but, as they drift into that sunset, they might have a crack at running the country. And if they get the chance, there is no doubt they will approach things in much the same way: arguing daily, agreeing occasionally, slapping infrequently, hugging momentarily, but always, always, remembering to put their beloved Sri Lanka above all else.
As easy as it is to end on that note, to INVEST so much in one family – even if it’s the first family of Sri Lankan cricket – feels like tempting fate. Sri Lanka is about so much more. And this was drummed into my impressionable mind from the time I could understand these things by my sport-loving maternal grandfather PKS Raja. He worked for the British before India gained independence, survived Second World War raids in Chittagong bunkers, was crowned the ruler of the princely state of Calicut in his nineties, and was still asking just how many more India needed to avoid the follow-on after his hundredth birthday. He would also tell anyone who would listen: “When all is lost, England will still have Wembley, Wimbledon and Lord’s.”
Looking at Sri Lanka today – perhaps the youngest country to have emerged from a bloody civil war – those words still ring true. Men will come and men will go, brothers will arm themselves against each other but, in Colombo, the three sisters will sustain cricketing life as only they can.
