I refer to the news item titled ‘Now cricket fever hits stray dogs’ by Nadia Fazlulhaq, which appeared in The Sunday Times (page 7) on August 10.
This brings to mind an effort by some Sri Lanka cricket officials, a few years ago, to have all the dogs in Kandy rounded up in time for the arrival of an English cricket team and their supporting “Barmy Army”. The news was highlighted in the foreign press too. This inhumane anti-dogs proposal was dropped following angry protests from concerned Kandy citizens and animal lovers.
It is interesting to hear how officials attached to the Premadasa Stadium have suddenly started worrying about the presence of “a large number of unvaccinated dogs in the area, which pose a threat to spectators” on the eve of the one-day cricket series with India.
The Colombo Municipal Council did an admirable job of rounding up a limited number of stray dogs near the BMICH and the Vihara Maha Devi Park, just before the recent SAARC summit. After the summit, the stray dogs were returned to their original habitat or neighbourhoods, in keeping with World Health Organization recommendations and the new humane policy on anti-rabies control in Sri Lanka. This was comprehensively reported in The Sunday Times.
The appearance of stray dogs at international cricket matches is nothing new. We see this happen often, and even foreign commentators have made light-hearted reference to the stray dogs that appear on the local cricketing scene, and even hold up play for short periods. Stray dogs in or around a cricket venue will not be a strange or revolting sight to the visiting Indian players and spectators. Stray dogs are a very common sight in India.
It is the responsibility of the Sri Lanka Cricket Board and those managing the major cricket venues to plan well ahead and ensure that both stray dogs and dogs with owners in the respective areas are vaccinated against rabies well in advance of an international or local match where a large crowd is expected.
If the venue is properly fenced in, there will be no need to make last-minute appeals to the Colombo Municipal Council to round up dogs ahead of big cricket matches.
Only a tiny fraction of the Sri Lanka Cricket Board’s enormous funds and resources would be required for a programme to vaccinate and sterilise dogs to ensure that the big cricket venues are safe from the rabies threat. And it would be nice if our national cricketers also chipped in and made a contribution from their earnings, which include sponsorship fees, to the humane fight against rabies and dog population control.The above-mentioned news report would be more credible if it gave some figures, exact or approximate, relating to the number of incidents of children training at the Premadasa Stadium being bitten by dogs.
The CMC cannot, and should not, be expected to round up stray dogs for the duration of any and every crowd-attracting event, whether these are at public venues or at the residences of very important persons. The public should support the CMC in every way in its programme of humane rabies control. Those responsible for maintaining sports venues should also be making their own useful contributions to this cause.
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