Is this the answer to cricket’s impasse
Former Sri Lanka skipper Aravinda de Silva is tipped to be Vice President of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), but the cricket legend says he still has not decided on the matter.
Speaking exclusively to the Sunday Times, the doyen of cricket says, if he decides to take up the responsibility, he would need an efficient team to translate his vision and decisions into action. He envisages it is high time that Sri Lanka’s cricket community stopped bickering and get on to a common platform to solve cricket’s problems for the good of the game that we love.
De Silva began his narrative by saying “In this endeavour I have no favourites. It is a matter of accomplishing a task that has to be done with diligence. When the task is properly done, the winner will be the game of cricket”
The former national cricket captain said, “At the moment our cricket is at low ebb. This means we have gone wrong at one point of time in our cricket. I remember when Duleep (Mendis) and Roy (Dias) were the mainstay in our cricket, Arjuna (Ranatunga) and I played and grew in confidence, and in the same way, when Arjuna and I were coming to the end of our careers, Sanath Jayasuriya and Marvan Atapattu brought stability and solidity to our batting. And when they were coming to the end of their careers, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardena were mature enough to take over. The same thing was happening with Dinesh Chandimal and Lahiru Thirimanne at one point of their careers. They were growing in confidence under Sangakkara and Jayawardena, but for some inexplicable reason the chain was broken and we lost the proper use of that talent for about a year or more.”
“When we beat Australia 3-0 in a Test series at home last year, that should have been the foundation to build upon. At that point we had two youngsters — Kusal Mendis and Dhananjaya de Silva — blossoming out as future stars, but today, even their very places are in doubt in the playing XI. The only cricketer who stands above the rest is Angelo Mathews.
“This is the situation we have to reverse. We have to bring back the confidence and belief in them. We must consider the flock of cricketers as your own children. Just imagine, if one of your own had to go through the circumstances that our National Cricketers are going through, what would have been our plight! Most of them are still in their early 20s. This is why I say we must unite and put our heads together for the betterment of cricket”.
“At the same time, we also have to change our cricket culture,” said de Silva. He says this has to happen from the grassroots level. “You have to nurture cricketers from a very young age and that has to happen through proper professional coaching system. Sometimes, I find the coaches don’t handle the young cricketers in a proper manner and, as a result, the young players move away from the game,” De Silva added.
De Silva is also of the opinion that the base of our cricket should be a hybrid between club cricket and provincial cricket. He said, “We cannot completely move away from the club cricket concept, because it is an established system in this island. From 2003, I have been trying to develop the provincial system along with club cricket. I always believed that our cricket has a good brand image and corporate value, which is backed by a huge fan base.
“From the present 24 teams that play First Class Cricket, we could derive five provincial entities, and from that, we should build five provincial centres (PCs). These PCs will also run as separate profit centres which will be backed by blue chip companies which have Rs 30 billion turnover (US$ 200 million). They need to run these units on a profit-sharing basis. In short, the corporate partners will do the image building with value addition, while the SLC would provide it with cricket with a competitive structure.
De Silva also believes that past presidents and interim committee chairmen should head these organisations as patrons. They would head the units on a rotational basis, which would give the structure a five-year life span. Meanwhile, all decisions would be taken by a collective unit, with the broader view of taking cricket to the next plain.
Then, within ten years, the five provincial centres could be increased to eight, if there is sufficient corporate backing.
The master batsman also called for a change within in the culture of our cricket.
He said that while developing modern technical and coaching methods, “we must also stress upon retaining our own style of cricket, which has yielded positive results right through.”
“Knowing and developing technical skills are important. But, we do have a unique style of cricket which we have profited from. It helped us win the Cricket World Cup in 1996. But, at the same time, we must have some value-added coaching and skill development methods from the grassroots level in schools and other institutions, with proper human resource systems.”
“Another area we must take a close look at is the mental aspect of cricket or, any sports for that matter. We must lay a lot of emphasis to this area because, when it comes to real international competitions, more than 75% of the game is mental and character, while the rest is only technique and skill.
“At the same time, I feel that, at any level, the coach-player relationship should be maintained at a very professional level. I mean, akin to a teacher-student relationship in school. The coach and the player should work together diligently at certain tasks, but each person should know his parametres.”
“We are in the process of modernising this cricketing unit, so that, we could match our cricket with the rest of the world. In one way, it is good we could not embark on this project for so long, without doing much damage to our game. Just imagine countries like Australia and England have set up these units sometime ago, and they are rather old. At the same time, they must have qualified people to handle areas such as development technology and research. Then, when we do it, it would be the latest in technology. We would be at a definite advantage”.