Sri Lanka’s latest Minister of Sports Namal Rajapaksa could be just days away from realizing that finding solutions or cleaning up the rotten set-up that has ruined sports for the past 15 years will be unlike his rough tough playing days when he wore the Sri Lanka jersey on the rugby field.
A former rugby forward who passed from modest college beginnings and went through the mill to become a Tusker, Rajapaksa already made it clear he will not let any sport that needs a clean-up escape his vision and focus.
But it won’t be smooth sailing for the youngest Sri Lankan Minister at the age of 34 who last week went surfing the waves in down south Hambantota that he wants to turn into an attractive venue for summer sports.
In his eagerness for a rousing kick-off, Rajapaksa excited and raised curiosity among sports watchers by installing a swashbuckling National Sports Council that has ex-cricket icons Mahela Jayawardena and Kumar Sangakkara, Olympian swimmer Julian Bolling, legal experts, businessmen and corporate superstars among others.
“We are at the crossroads where important decisions have to be made. I expected the new Minister to first take time and study the situation and then bring in the right people to advise him,” said Gregory de Silva a Masters holder in Sports and Human Resources Management acquired in the USA.
A former long and triple jump champion, De Silva headed a recent Probe Committee to investigate malpractices, corruption, fixing and misuse of funds at last December’s South Asian Games and is not expecting much to change unless what he calls “attitudes change”.
“I wonder how many in the new National Sports Council have the right credentials and the experience to handle this subject full time. Some of them are business minded. They are here today and fly away to England or some other country the next day,” said De Silva.
But expectations are also running high among the rugby fraternity which saw Rajapaksa as an influential off-field figure even as a player.
He will now be turning more heads as a Minister than he did as a player and one of the most easily approachable personalities in a country that adores its sports.
“The best writing is on the wall,” said Rizly Illyas who will be elected uncontested as the new head of Sri Lanka Rugby next week and is betting heavily on Minister Rajapaksa to do for rugby what his predecessors did not.
“Let me be straight about it. You need politics and rugby to go hand in hand. There will be tremendous energy for us now. He (Minister Rajapaksa) has been a sportsman and he knows it in and out.”
But Rajapaksa’s biggest challenge is likely to come from sports associations affiliated to the Olympic Committee, some of them roguish in their dealings and tainted by corruption, politics, nepotism, money laundering and inappropriate sexual misconduct.
Analysts argue that Rajapaksa can himself be a victim if he does not look sharp with those who swim alongside him or else end up the same way his predecessors and Sports Ministers of the past as they basked in pompous boasts and did absolutely nothing other than create shark ponds.