World Cup aftermath
View(s):It is indeed a great humiliation in the manner in which Sri Lanka cricket team had to bow down at the quarter final stage of the world cup. I do not wish to blame any player or the team for the debacle. The defeat primarily should be the responsibility of Sanath Jayasuriya headed selectors. Sri Lanka Cricket administrators also should take part of the blame.
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It seems that Sri Lankan cricket administrators do not care about the team’s mental and physical status, if not they should not have arranged a hurriedly scheduled Indian tour preceding the world cup. Even the New Zealand tour too should not have taken place which gave Kiwis firsthand knowledge of weaknesses and strength of Lankan players and to pre-plan counter attacks. It is obvious that the administrators were concerned only about the money they could reap from the tours.
I wish to place my personal views in order to uplift and to prevent a repetition of humiliation defeats and how to strengthen the Sri Lanka cricket as a whole.
The present Sri Lankan administrators should be replaced with people who have cricketing knowledge of the game. The president should be an ex-test player and the secretary should be a player who had played first class cricket.
The selection committee should comprise of five selectors, headed by a Test player and four who have played first class cricket. When they assemble to pick teams, the captain and the head coach should be present to have firsthand knowledge about the players they are going to pick. Each selector should have an assistant to go round the countryside to pick new talent.
All present local tournaments should be scraped and replaced with the vintage tournaments of P. Saravanamuttu, Donavan Andree and Daily News Trophies. Each trophy should carry lucrative cash prizes for the winners and runners-up. The winning Sara trophy team could be nominated to the IPL tournament. It would be the duty of Sri Lanka Cricket to assist all cricket clubs financially, so that these clubs would be able to bring professionalism to the game. The clubs would be able to recruit (buy) players on contract basis.
After the end of each tournament players should be given four weeks of rest and practice before embarking on a new tournament.
The coach could be a local or an international, preferably an all-rounder in his playing days. To me an ex-player like Lance Klusner of South Africa is an ideal name for the job. He was a player who could wield his bat with power to penetrate the field. He is also a medium pace bowler who could swing the ball. His fielding was exceptionally good at any position in the field. I hope the future administrators would keep his name in mind if a new coach is envisaged. There should not be separated coaches for different departments of the game. There should be assistants to the coach and he should be independent in his choice whether he needs an assistant or not. An assistant could be recruited on contract basis for a particular period. A necessity arises to boost the morale of players and keep them in a positive mental approach. For this the services of a psychologist is imminent. A good psychologist can do immense good to the team. For this post I would recommend a psychologist from American board of sports psychology for short stint before tournaments.
The distinction between batsmen and bowlers should be forgotten from the cricketing fields. All batsmen should be able to ball as part-time bowlers. That is how Dilshan became a regular bowler at present. I do not know why Mahela Jayawardena’s bowling prowess not harnessed in the past. In the similar manner all bowlers should be able to bat. It is the duty of the coach to see that bowlers could bat as well and know their basics. I was wondering why coaches in the past did not bother to correct some basic wrongs in the batting of our bowlers. Has any coach tried to correct Muthiah Muralitheran or Lasith Malinga in their batting. So it is imperative to see that batsmen could ball couple of steady overs and bowlers to play cricketing strokes and collect some decent runs and at times to keep his wicket safe. Let us forget that there is a tail in the batting order.I fervently believe that the suggestions mentioned above would give the cricket loving public to debate about and forward their suggestions in order to make sure that a cricketing debacle would not happen in the future.
Pro Patria