Yes to cricket, no to rugby as Minister plays double game | Page 2 | Sunday Observer

Yes to cricket, no to rugby as Minister plays double game

21 May, 2023
File photo of one of Sri Lanka’s most illustrious players Fazil Marija playing in an international match when rugby players in the island savoured good times on the Asian circuit
File photo of one of Sri Lanka’s most illustrious players Fazil Marija playing in an international match when rugby players in the island savoured good times on the Asian circuit

Sri Lankans are seeing the funniest, cruelest and most arrogant side of the sports set -up in the country with the latest meanest blow coming in the form of World Rugby sin-binning Sri Lanka Rugby four months after the country’s football body became a pariah in the eyes of the international fraternity.

Both bans have made Sri Lanka the laughing stock of the world as the island continues to make headlines for the wrong reasons while Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe keeps shooting his mouth at the sight of cameras, microphones and recorders.

The banning of rugby may have nothing to do with a pariah administration but more to do with Minister Ranasinghe acting like an amateur amid the pros and doing absolutely nothing progressive other than play a double game while one rugby faction that is not in governance plays spoil sport from the touchlines and the inside group apparently self destructs due to its own arrogance.

Minister Ranasinghe will have a lot to answer for the manner in which he has read the sports situation in the country and contrary to him being the solution he has become the problem, the most scorned and despised of all Sports Ministers according to sports watchers in the island.

Three months after he summoned sports editors for what was a media conference at the Sugathadasa Sports Complex in Colombo to say that he will clean the set-up in a week, Minister Ranasinghe blew his top once again in an apparent seeking of cheap publicity with a gullible media chasing after him.

“Football has fallen, rugby has fallen, cricket has fallen and all major sports have collapsed. The reason is a breakdown in the organization. There is no progress and responsibility. We have to put forward a new work schedule. Paper clubs that don’t take part in any activities must end,” Minister Ranasinghe said this week while being at a function in Ratnapura echoing the same litany he uttered when he met sports editors in February.

For reasons best known to Minister Ranasinghe he dares not touch cricket and sees it better to dabble in rugby that he can bundle into touch and let his so-called Interim Committee do the rest or lead it to further disaster.

The end result is that unlike cricket which is too rich, too sacred, run by influential officials and followed by millions of curious supporters, rugby has been caught up in somebody else’s war and not many Sri Lankans will be bothered to raise a finger against its international banning as the country has no high place on the global stage.

For its own part rugby administration in the country took a turn for the worst during the past three years as it shed its image as one of the most, if not the most gentlemanly sports body in the country until ten years ago when undercurrents and political back-stabbing began to creep in.

Minister Ranasinghe’s closest advisor is none other than the ex-cricket World Cup winner Arjuna Ranatunga and interestingly both have become the biggest showmen talkers in the country while Sri Lanka is a sitting duck for pot shots by World Rugby and the football governing body FIFA.

Even in spite of a rotten sports set-up in the country, Minister Ranasinghe’s package for a clean-up that he sold to the media three months ago if implemented will come as a shock as he presently qualifies to be another also-ran bureaucrat.

 

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