SPORTS

Dav must not be blamed

By Gamini Senadhira reporting from England 

Now, the axe will be ready to chop, the Lankan coach Dav Whatmore's head as a result of Sri Lanka's sorry show on English soil, not only in the power Test series but also in the Natwest one-day competition as well.

One must not forget the fact that Dav was one of those who were responsible for lifting Sri Lanka from nowhere to the summit of the world's one-day ladder in 1996, when the Lankans pocketed the Wills Cricket World Cup sans much fuss, winning all their games handsomely.

Though Dav was shown the door out, he was again recalled to guide the Lankans out of the troubled waters in the recent past.

He did his job quick admirably, and helped the Lankan skipper, Sanath Jayasuriya and his outfit to become the Asian Test champions with nine consecutive victories to their credit.

The BCCSL had been experiencing rapid changes in its administration as a result of politics getting involved in a game that has brought not only honour and fame, but also big money to a nation that had been struggling to survive.

The big gun's greed for their personnel prestige and glory, today has resulted in a team that was on top, crashing to the bottom as no cricket supporter in Lanka had ever expected.

So do not blame Dav Whatmore for other people's sins. He tries to push his team to win back at least a bit of their lost prestige even if Lanka is pushed out of the Natwest final at Lords on July 13.

Lanka, quite naturally, will be desperate to turn around their flagging fortunes with a solid display against England at Leeds on July 2 and India at Edgbaston on July 6. Their failure to achieve it will definitely see them out of the final.

Whatmore's comments on the eve of Lanka's clash with England at Leeds prove that the coach is yet trying to give the much needed oxgen to a dying side "We are not far away from getting our groove. If you look at the level of fight, then it is quite evident, that the team shows a desire to win. What we need is to give ourselves a little bit more of a chance, score a few more runs at the right time and take the fight to the opposition to get a winning result".

It was so near, but so far

Dav and the Lankan skipper, Surely must be most disappointed to see that their gutsy efforts at Leeds against England to prove that they are proven herocs bruised and battered but not yet knocked out disappeared in to the dark clouds that surrounded Headingley.

Jayasuriya's whirlwind 112 in 87 balls with five sixes and nine fours on a rain affected strip, a score of 241 runs in 32 overs, a somewhat of an impossible target, still failed to produce a successful result. Why? The Lankans are yet, not cool in crisis. The wrong bowling changes, fielding, passengers on the field, wasting time on a quickly deteriorating light, that will result in the opposition being adjudged the winner - all should be accepted factors that again proves that we just cannot hold a candle to the Englishman in their own den.

Though Sri Lanka cut cricketers of the calibre of Arjuna Ranatunga, Roshan Mahanama, Aravinda de Silva, pointing out that they are too old to be in the profession, England's wicket keeper batsman again proved that, he at 38 years, still can be a match winner.

So let those who were out for the blood of many a knowledgeable and efficient cricketer of Sri Lanka answer for the nation's sudden debacle on the cricket arena. Sri Lanka in now, certainly out of the final.

Comment:- I know that Aravinda de Silva at 36, is yet better than Nuwan Soysa and Aviska, on the field.

Games is gratis, but-at what cost?

By T M K Samat

TYPICAL of the divisiveness that has long dogged local rugby, officials cannot reach unanimity on the question of whether Sri Lanka should or shouldn't compete in the Commonwealth Games sevens tournament, this month in Manchester. 

The country was not on the organizers' original list of invitees, but was included when Zimbabwe dropped out. ''We were told of our inclusion some three weeks ago,'' said Harsha Mayadunne, President SLRFU. It is an all-expenses-paid trip and the union saw it as manna from heaven. The invitation was promptly accepted. The team is scheduled to leave on July 28 and return around August 10 _ but not before quite some hullabaloo.

With the Caltex league season in progress, the union's decision was always going to attract criticism. Not surprisingly the first dissenting voice heard was that of Kandy Sports Club, the leading contender for the league title. The reigning league and knockout champions stand to lose at least three key players, Sanjeewa Jayasinghe (the national sevens skipper), Sajith Mallikaratchi and Radhika Hettiaratchchy during the near fortnight the national team will be away. CR and FC, another contender for league honours, is also likely to voice concern as it also is expected to have quite a few of its better talents in the 12-man squad.

''It is our duty to pick the best squad _ and you can't do that without choosing the best players from the two clubs playing the best rugby currently,'' said Tikiri Maramabe, chairman selectors. '' The three Kandy SC players (Jayasinghe, Mallikaratchi and Hettiaratchchy) are must selections _ they're so good.''

At first sight, the issue looks to be an old hat _ of Kandy SC putting club before country. In these commercial times, the fashionable clich‚ is, 'do as the paymaster says'.

Touchy debate

The club or country debate is a touchy one, though why it is brought to the platform at all is baffling. Playing sport, after all, is all about striving to represent your country. But attitudes have changed, specifically after the handing of monthly envelopes became as customary as the traditional after-match beer.

Given the protestations by the best paymasters in town, there are genuine fears that they would insist on having first call on their national players, which means they wouldn't be available for national training. This could mean that either 1/ choosing Kandy SC players despite their absence from national training or 2/ go to the Games without them. Either way, the Manchester-bound squad isn't going to be the best, in terms of talent and preparation. National practices, by the way, haven't yet commenced, and indications are that the squad would have undergone roughly two weeks of togetherness in training. Preparation for the inter-club sevens is far more comprehensive.

To be fair, the SLRFU's helplessness to make better arrangements deserve some sympathy. The invitation was thrust on them only the other day and given the limited time, a perfect arrangement was never going to be possible. Even so it will be hard to prevent charges that Manchester is no more than a gratis holiday. That charge could've been shrugged off, but for the fact that Sri Lanka isn't quite spoken of in glowing terms in international rugby circles. It is not on the IRB's list confirmed invitees for many of its sevens tournaments and, contrary to expectations, was denied invitations to the Singapore and Malaysia sevens of this year. This was despite making a reasonable impression against teams like Scotland and Wales in HongKong and Dubai respectively. Whether Sri Lanka can make a better impression in Manchester (including powerhouses like Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland, Wales, South Africa and Fiji) is doubtful.

The union, of course, will dwell on the virtues of international experience, but here, it is a matter of preserving the little credibility it still holds with the IRB. Showing the flag in Manchester is well and good, but disgracing it can only damage whatever future the country has in international rugby.

Help Sanna out of this hole

By T.M.K. Samat

EVEN the breathtaking butchery of Jayasuriya didn't make a difference: Sri Lanka again lost Tuesday. So, now there seems little else for Jayasuriya's men to do but pack bags and look homewards. The incurable optimists, of course, will refuse to write-off a place in the NatWest final Sunday next. Technically, this is a possibility. Should Sri Lanka win all of its three remaining matches and one of its two rivals (at the time of writing both have two wins and a draw each) lose all of theirs, then the final is possible. But this is stretching the limits of possibilities a bit too much. Rationally, Sri Lanka's qualification remains more in fiction at this point of time.

If that seeming fiction is to be fact, then, Jayasuriya's men will have to show the sort of grit and courage that make war heroes. Those virtues have been conspicuous by their absence, never more glaringly than on Tuesday night. 241 in 32 overs is an impregnable fortress and if that was surrendered, then surely there isn't a case for our presence in the final. So, the sad saga continues. The team, after all, has yet to come out of the hole it fell into on that devastating afternoon of May 30, the first day of the Second Test that was eventually conceded on the fourth afternoon in Edgbaston. An imminent draw in the next Test promised some redemption, but in allowing England 50 runs from 30 legal deliveries, and the series, 2/0, confirmed the team's disability to climb out of the dumps. Tuesday only provided reconfirmation.

The Test series conceded, there was much talk of turn-around in the shorter tri-nation contest, but it has remained just that - talk.  Despondency from defeat apparently is an incurable ailment as far as our team is concerned.  It began, if you remember, with the thrashing at the hands of Pakistan in the Sharjah final in mid April. Sri Lanka had been unbeaten until then in Sharjah, having arrived in the desert-city as the recently crowned Asian Test champions and Test-win no.9 just inked into the history books.  A month in England and that splendiferous memory is all but dead.

Varied reasons

The reasons for the shambles in England have been wide and varied. Opinions will differ, but a common thread runs through the lot: Muralitheran's injury. It isn't an irony that the beginning of the decline coincided with the minute the ace bowler made a horizontal departure from the Sharjah playing field. Since then, the team's state of wellbeing has been pretty much the same as that of a family deprived of its breadwinner. While the indispensable qualities of the genius are unquestionable, there clearly was a helplessness to accept the fact that, with or without Muralitheran, the world has to move on. As was the case in Sharjah that April afternoon, the sense of futility in living in a world without Muralitheran shadowed the team in England. Where other teams would strive to turn misfortune to triumph, like England did without Caddick and Gough, Sri Lanka drifted with the tide rather than row against it. It has to be quickly added however, this wasn't intentional reluctance, but more a state of mind conditioned by the team's years-long dependence on the ace. 

As does happen in the aftermath of a failed series, much of the blame will be placed at the door of the captain. And it won't be a small pile that will be left at Jayasuriya's door. The Sri Lankan psyche isn't quite known for patience or rationality, and minds pickled in politics can only be damn side worse. So any calls for Jayasuriya's head wouldn't be altogether surprising given that his leadership in England wasn't unflawed. All the negative aspects of his captaincy have been dwelled upon to a point of exhaustion by critics, reputed and sundry. His inability to inspire through example, the negativism, the un-imaginativeness, his softness... the list is unending.

Few, however, have spared a thought to the harsh situation Jayasuriya was placed in, precipitated largely by the injury to Muralitheran only days before the English tour. To recover from a disappointment of such brutal suddenness isn't easy, if not impossible. It is easy to blame it on Jayasuriya, arguing the responsibility is his' to inspire other bowlers to fill the void of an attack without or with an one-armed Muralitheran. But that is less than half the truth and ignores historical facts or refuses to apply them in this context. The fact is Muralitheran has been the sole bowling reason for all of the country's successes since his entry in the early 1990s. Really, dwelling on the importance of Muralitheran is superfluous here. 

Since the indispensability of one of the world's best off spinner, if not the best is unarguable, it logically follows that without him, the team is going to struggle. And Jayasuriya's men did. The impact (of the sudden realization that they will have to do without Muralitheran) had on the minds of Jayasuriya and his men haven't got the appreciation it deserves. His 400-plus-wicket haul is, after all, more than what all his fellow bowlers, past and present, have managed. Clearly, the thought that he wouldn't be on the field did cause a mental paralysis, which is why Vaas and Zoysa probably weren't the bowlers they were expected to be. There will be arguments that they didn't put the ball in the right spot or in directions unaligned to the field placements, which, with a functioning Muralitheran, they consistently did. It is an undeniable fact that our attack for over a decade has been built around Muralitheran. Remove the pillar and there was always going to be a serious dislocation _ mental and physical.

Controversy

The problem was further compounded by the controversy that erupted no sooner than Ruchira Perera had claimed two wickets in two balls in the first Test. The team sank deeper in despondency. Probably nations toughened by a longer history in Test cricket could've battled again these crippling odds, but it's a bit much for a country just 20 years in the real world _ more so with a team yet negotiating a transition. At times the team of the new millenium did outstrip the deeds of Ranatunga's formidable outfit of the 1990s, but clearly, it has yet to acquire the experience, and with it consistency, to battle out of crunch situations. England 2002 is a new lesson learnt. 

Whether Ranatunga would've done better is subjective. But comparisons are unfair, as the situations each was placed were different. Of course there were times Ranatunga too coped without Muralitheran, but on those occasions victory wasn't achieved either. But what Jayasuriya had to contend with on this tour, Ranatunga never had to. The present leader undertook the country's first ever three-Test series in England, and at the unkindest time of the season, especially for cricketers from the tropics. And given the string of misfortunes that had to be endured, Muralitheran's injury not the least of them, it is doubtful a captain by another name could've done better.

Team spirit

The change of administration in mid- tour didn't help relieve the burdens. Team spirit is an unexplainable thing, but any lack of it is easily identifiable. Jayasuriya's air of loneliness, for example. That a captain and his team ought not to be influenced by changes in the boardroom may be a nice old theory, but the reality is different _ more so when we have administrators who are wary about not treading on political corns. One does not have to be an exceptional intellect to understand that frictions at the top inevitably reflect at the lower levels, be it in corporate or state governance. In the case of the board, the friction over who calls the shots _ Chairman Hemaka Amarsuriya or the politically powerful Thilanga Sumithipala _ is public knowledge. 

Whether that rivalry, one way or other has infected the players is difficult to say. But this much is fairly certain: the Sri Lanka dressing room isn't the happy place it was not long ago. The body language on the field says so _ the high fives aren't the spontaneous expressions of joy they used to be, neither is the embracing warmth among the players. These things don't happen without reasons. One story doing the rounds is that Jayasuriya was unhappy with the one-day squad selections, hinting the absence of a meeting of minds with selectors. The story is given some credence by the late changes made to the original squad, reportedly at the behest of the sports minister. It wouldn't be wrong to think, as is popularly rumoured, the skipper himself spoke to the minister and had the squad re-changed. To be critical of Jayasuriya for getting in touch with the minister, if he did, is justifiable. But there's a question to be asked before he is judged. Is there any one in the present interim committee he could've spoken his troubles to? To be fair, the new administrators were appointed only the other day and establishing the crucial rapport between players and officials requires a longer period of time. The previous interim committee, it has to be said, maintained a meaningful relationship with the players. This may not be the only reason for the team's string of remarkable performances under the previous regime, but it has to a crucial one. 

It hasn't been the best of tours in many respects, the sagging team spirit the most worrying. Looking ahead, it is worth noting that when the Sri Lanka team leave for South Africa in late October they'll arrive back only after the February-March World Cup. In between the two journeys to South Africa is a one-month one-day series in Australia in January. Being four-five months away from home can easily grate the nerves and tax the patience of men pining for home company and comforts. God forbid the irritants of the ten-week tour of England accompanying the team on this four-five months journey of two continents. It begs the present board to investigate, identify the points of friction and then condition minds for what will be an odyssey, climaxing with the World Cup. Cool heads rather than angry, enflamed minds are required to help Jayasuriya's men out of the hole they tumbled into some three months ago in Sharjah.

Bradby Night - 2002

The annual reunion of Trinity College OBA, Colombo branch to felicitate the Bradby in Colombo.

Venue: CR & FC, Longden Place.

Date: Saturday 13 July

Time: 7.30 p.m. onwards.

Spirits and dinner stalls at club rates

Kiddies Corner, Giant Screen, Games and DJ Music

Tickets:

Gents: Rs. 200.

Ladies: Rs. 100.

Kids: Free

Reserve your tickets: Horace Jacob 681220, Sharm De Alwis 910180, Andrew Thevathasan 647567, Anil Goonatilake 300437, Romesh Jayawardena 434488, Prabath Harshakumar 329681, Anura Ratnawardana 577943.