It has now being proved beyond doubt that the Sri Lanka cricket team is a highly politicized entity unrivaled by any other with everyone trying to show or showing his importance to govern that has led to the players being on their own without direction and now comes the news that the sports minister wants to go or has gone to Australia to talk to the players.
What can a layman or a minister do to lift the morale of professional players who already have plenty of experts in various fields like batting, bowling and fielding is the most baffling question of all. If there is something wrong with the mindset of the players, who like coach Chandika Hathurusinha are also paid heavily to deliver, then what should be done is to enlist the services of an expert in Motivation.
The government should leave cricket matters in the hands of genuine experts and mind its own business like making sure that miscreants don’t get into office to run Sri Lanka Cricket. In the past we had sports ministers making a beeline from Sri Lanka to meet the players and the opposite has happened meaning the team ends up in a worse situation than what they were in.
It is also baffling to know why sports ministers dabble so much in cricket when other sports like football continue to be in the dumps.
Today Sri Lanka has too many cooks who are spoiling the soup and every Tom, Dick and Harry comes forward to project himself as the savior of the Sri Lanka team when in effect they are all worried about how to get in there and then relish the good things that cricket has to offer and bring them results other than the results on the field.
Within months sports ministers come and go and selection committee after selection committee is formed that results in captains being changed and players chopped or brought in signalling a political hand is at work.
Then we have administrators jockeying for positions and now the wives of players taking on opposing husbands on social media which has created more evil than virtue.
Then what happened to that so-called document tabled in parliament based on the recommendations of Sidat Wettimuny to change the way cricket administration is done in the country where votes can be bought and the winner of the most number of votes gets to run the affairs of the sport. Don’t we hear of MPs being bought over and changing parties for money and they call this multi party democracy.
It is very strange that those who talk about democracy don’t advocate democracy at sporting bodies. It is the verdict of the clubs and their votes that matters the most. Clubs are answerable to their players who make up the Sri Lanka team. Interim Committees are politically motivated.
Jonny Wieseman
Dehiwela