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Has Sports Minister Jayasekera lost his rosy hue playing marbles with the nation’s cricket and ordering Lanka’s ODI squad off the India-bound flight?
He may know his political pole vaulting better than anyone else in the country. He may know his footwork when it comes to dancing – learnt perhaps at the feet of his father in law, Kandy’s famed dance maestro Pani Bharatha – displayed with sword and stick on city streets during Mahinda’s May Day procession in 2014. Not to forgery, of course, his inborn talent to thump his own drum, another talent he displayed to the street gallery that same May Day.

He may also have the gift of the gab – put to good use to abuse the opposition’s common candidate Maithripala Sirisena during the run up to the presidential election January 2015. He may also be praised in some quarters for his talent to execute the reverse somersault – the backward bulti – and gain Maithripala’s grace and favour to land the coveted job of sports minister, the instant he was elected president.

All these are not in dispute. The question is whether Sports Minister Dayasiri Jayasekera has lost his rosy hue and, in tampering with the mindset of the nation’s sporting heroes, has gone over the boundary line to take the catch? And claim it as a valid dismissal?

In short, does the Sport’s Minister know his cricket? How to wield the willow? How to turn the ball? How to dive and field? How to read the pitch and not queer it? And most importantly, as captain of the team, how to lead his men to the ground fired by inspirational leadership? Or does he only know how, in a fit of temper, to order them back to the dressing room to sate his ego and order them back when it’s quenched, merely because he has the power to do so?

Lacking the basic cricketing skills, does the minister suffer from an inferiority complex which can only be assuaged by throwing his weight around and issuing his fiats to prove to the cricketing world that, though he may not have the talent to score with either bat or ball, he possesses the inborn flair for political gymnastics and jugglery which have won him the political power to be the overlord of Lanka’s sporting arena and given him the awesome right to hurl humiliation and condemnation ‘pon them, whenever the mood and moment swing him?

Does he know that he is the Minister of Sports lording over the national cricket team competing in an international arena and aware of the responsibilities that go with the job? Or does he think he is the master in charge of his Panduwasnuwara hometown’s soft ball team? And that the art of leadership consists of condemning the players in public rather than inspiring them in private?

SPORTS MINISTER THEN: Dancing the jig with sword and stick on city streets while participating in Mahinda’s May Day procession in 2014

In June this year when Lanka’s cricket had slid to a new low under his ministerial leadership, what did he do to reverse the trend? He sought to do so by punching their stomachs not realising, perhaps, he was hitting them where it hurts the most. Not in their bellies but in their hearts and in their minds. His words of encouragement to the team were to tell the public to gaze at the Michelin tyres of fat around the middle of their anatomies. Quoting the oft quoted cliché he said: “Catches win matches but our players continue to drop catches because they cannot get their hands down their stomachs to take the catch because their stomach’s bulge.”

Apart from the image that flashback to the scene 20 years ago of Arjuna Ranatunga taking a casual stroll on the field like a sloth bear who had drunk a hive of honey and going off, with his pot belly preceding his reputation, to hibernate at the mid-off or in the covers, can you spot anyone in the Lankan team today with a noticeable protruding amplified rice and beer belly? But then when did you last go down to cricket’s locker room to sneak a peak, as the minister possibly may have done to see Lanka’s cricket team exposed warts, belly and all in the shower?

Perhaps the minister was in a more privileged position, privileged enough to take a peep into the Bangladeshi team’s locker room, too. Speaking as if he was the Bangladesh Minister of Sports, he continued his tirade against the Lankan team’s extended girth and fat content and then proceeded to admire the iron board stomach physique of the Bangladesh cricket team, with no exception. “Look at the Bangladesh team today, “he said. “Each one of them has the perfect body. The fellows in our team are brought up like babies.”

Did those words of encouragement, whilst it would have no doubt lifted the Bangladeshi team’s collective spirit to receive such a morale boost from Lanka’s Sports Minister, serve to inspire the Lankan players to perform better? To play their best? Or did it only make Lankan cricket find in its nadir, a deeper depth still?

Last week Lanka suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Indians. The result: India won by an innings and 239 runs. Not for him to paraphrase the words of Tennyson – and, for the Sports Minister’s edification, that’s Lord Alfred Tennyson, the English poet and not Tennyson Cooray, the Lankan comic actor – and say,

‘Tho’ much is taken, much abides;
and tho’ we are not now that strength
which in Chandrika’s days
moved the cricket world and won its coveted cup,
that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
made weak by time and fate,
but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
But willed with will to win cricket’s supreme chalice
and with triumph arise
to seek new heights from the ashes of our present defeats’.

Instead of rallying his forces with an inspirational cry to battle better next time round, this week he doomed the morale of his cricketing men to a further decline. He ordered the nine member squad picked by his own Sport’s Ministry’s selection committee to participate in the ODI matches in India next week to be off loaded from the Delhi bound flight late Monday night.

Cricket, like all activities of life, including sex, is a mind game. However fit one is, however flat one’s stomach is, if one’s mind is not on it, then no matter whatever befall, the spirit to rise fails, falters and falls and remains flaccid in the face of humiliation’s assault.
And Sports Minister Dayasiri,

• having used tape, six months ago, to measure the circumference of each player’s belly and found it far over the bulge limit;
• having announced that the players’ were far above the fat content of 12 per cent;
• having gone public with these private vital statistics – as if the cricketers were competing in the Mrs. World Contest requiring a 34-24-34 inch figure to be eligible to bid for the elusive crown:
• having found, in the physique of each and every Bangladesh cricketer, the Michelangelo artistic ideal of the body beautiful to be sculptured in marble; and,
• after having used the perks and privileges of his sports ministry office to host his own one man TV chat show and thereat to condemn and ridicule the toil and sweat of Lanka’s sporting heroes striving to win and bring home the Golden Fleece in Lanka’s honour,

this week chose to subject the ODI cricket squad to downright humiliation in front of all whilst they were strapped to their seats, ready and belted for takeoff to India to play the game of runs and wickets and make Lanka sit on the throne of international cricket.

Imagine their horror. They had been chosen by the Sports Ministry’s Selection Committee to participate in the scheduled ODI games. Not for them to ponder over whether protocol had been adhered to. Their focus was solely to give of their best and salvage some honour from the trail of match defeats. They had boarded the place to the applause and cheer of the passengers who had hailed them as the knights of cricket’s Camelot. Suddenly some officials board the plane and confront them with Dayasiri’s warrant to offload them from the aircraft. Pronto. And before the watching eyes of those who had hailed their arrival aboard as heroes of the realm, they are thrown overboard like stowaways on a schooner.

In the late hours of Monday night, Sports Minister Dayasiri Jayasekera stopped nine cricketers leaving for India on Tuesday to take part in a one-day series.

The reason given: he was unhappy with the get up of the team, the squad his own selection committee had chosen to send to India to bat for Lanka in next week’s ODI tournament. Why he was livid was that his own selection committee coming directly under him had not submitted the list three weeks before as the Sports Act passed 44 years ago demanded. It had only been submitted for his approval 72 hours before flight time. And thus, as a result, his answer was to order the cricketers who had boarded the plane in pride and with a thousand hopes to be deported from the craft, draped in ignominy, shame and despair. And all because his sensitive ministerial vanity was hurt and couldn’t stomach – whether flat bed like the Bangladeshis or bloated like the Lankans – the mortal wound to his swollen pride.

Of course, of course, he made his appearance at the crease to justify his arrogant behaviour off the field in the dressing room of his sports ministry, long after the stumps had been drawn and the damage had been done to Lanka’s cricketing ambitions.

On Tuesday, as reported in the Island newspaper on the 6th Wednesday, this is what he had to say in defense of his unprecedented move: “According to the law any team that participates in International tournaments, have to obtain the Sports Minister’s approval 21 days prior to departure. The list of selected cricketers led by Captain Thisara Perera was sent to my office after 5 pm last Friday and the team left for the airport on Monday afternoon,” the Minister noted, adding that the excuses provided were not acceptable.

“Respect for established laws, discipline and fitness have to be maintained. It is the key to winning. The person or persons responsible for this fiasco will have to personally pay the airline the penalty that has been imposed for cancellation of the air tickets.”

On Thursday as reported in the Daily Mirror, he changed from off spin to leg spin and said he was to claim the players were already aboard the airline when he received the list for his approval.

He said: “They tried to get my approval at the last moment and cricketers were already on board the aircraft. Under the Sports Law, sports bodies must get Sport Minister’s approval for foreign competitions 21 days prior to the departure. In this instance they have not done that for a reason best known to them.”

But whether it was seventy two hours notice or whether it was zero hour does it really matter? Perhaps his 3 year tenure as a minister of the Yahapalana government may have done wonders and instilled in him respect for established law but to take refuge in a section of a 44 year old Sport’s Act which requires the Sport’s Minister’s signature on the list of a sporting squad three weeks prior to their departure may seem a little out of date and somewhat anachronistic, does it not?

Like in politics, when it took Dayasiri not even twenty four hours to change from the defeated Mahinda’s camp to pole vault his jump back to the victorious Sirisena bank, much can happen in twenty one days in the field of sport. Loss of form, loss of health, loss of morale, loss of focus, the list is endless of the losses that can befall sportsman within twenty one days, not forgetting, of course, physical injury suffered even whilst practicing at the nets. Such is the competitve world of cricket today that selections are made at the last moment, in the nick of time before the coin is tossed.
So here’s the first question tossed full to the minister who proclaims to be manacled with pride to the transparency, accountability, just governance policies of the Yahapalana Government:

“Has there never been any previous occasion during his three year tenure of office as Sports Minister where the selected list of cricketers or any other sports team has been submitted to him 21 days before their departure for his signature? “

Dayasiri Jayasekera claims the rule of law must take priority. Good. But for the purpose of record, has he never violated the law, transgressed the sections of the Sports Act of 1973? Is this the first virgin instance he had received a list from the selection committee upon his desk for him to scrawl his signature of approval?

Never mind whether it was 72 hours before departure as he said on Tuesday and changed it to less than a minute on Wednesday, but being a stickler for law and discipline as he said he was, can he swear on his bat and ball that he has not doodled his signature and given approval to a list submitted by the selection committee less than 21 days before the team’s departure as the law demands?

Like there is many a slip between the cup and the lip in the drawing rooms of Lanka’s posh homes, there’s many a miss between the nick of the bat and the ball caught at first slip on cricket’s playing fields.

Cricketers are not like washing machines, factory tested and passed as being in good working order months before they are released to the market and put up for sale with a two year warranty. But more like race horses whose betting odds – as the Cricket Board’s Chairman Thilanga Sumathipala would, no doubt, have told the Sports Minister from his Deputy Speaker’s chair in Parliament – can fluctuate from 25 to 1 three weeks before the race is run to end up as odds on favourite seconds before the whistle is blown.

But the problem with Dayasiri is that he never bothered to ask.
International cricket matches are arranged well in advance. Venues have to be decided. Flight arrangements have to be made. Hotel accommodations have to be reserved. The itinerary has to be planned to ensure it will not clash with the teams’ others commitments. Selection of the squad is but a last minute decision which depends on the players’ performance. More than ninety percent of the Sport Ministry’s activities revolve round the most lucrative multimillion dollar cricket industry. And, thus should it not be the sports Minister’s primary duty to keep keen eye on Lanka’s cricket agenda, even as he expects Lanka’s batsmen to keep sharp eye on the ball? Sadly no.

To justify his impetuous decision to recall the Lankan ODI squad from the Indian bound flight, his lame and feeble excuse has been to heap the blame on the selection committee which comes directly under his purview. His explanation was, “I didn’t know. They never told me”.

But the question is: did he bother to ask?
Was it another case of “I didn’t know? “ And seeking, perhaps, in desperation to find safety in numbers, he said that even the Chairman of the Cricket Board Sumathipala hadn’t known about it? Is the Minister implying that he has no duty whatsoever to inquire into the activities of the selection committee on his own accord and volition? Is Dayasiri Jayasekera, without a blink of the eye, telling the nation, that he has no duty cast upon him as the Sports Minister to be aware of Lanka’s cricket calendar and keep watch on its dates?

If, as he now says, the selection committee are duty bound under the law to present to him the composition of the ODI squad three weeks before the selected players’ departure and that the list was not presented to him for approval until 72 hours before the squad was aboard the plane, didn’t he also have a concomitant duty to inquire from the selection committee, which comes directly under him, the reason for the delay? 20 days prior to departure?

Is, “I was never told” a good enough reason when the question the public wish to pose him is ‘why he never asked’? Or does he think that the people of this country spend millions for his upkeep for him to travel in the backseat of his public funded luxury limo in cool complacency and air conditioned comfort and never bother to ask the chauffeur where he is being driven to until the vehicle arrives at the wrong destination?

But that’s not all. He has passed the ball again to second slip. He has now announced that the people responsible for the loss caused by the cancellation of air tickets for the national squad to participate in the forthcoming one day International series with India, will have to be borne personally by the person or the persons responsible for not following the rules and regulations. In that respect however, he does not have to look far or appoint a committee to inquire into the matter and give a report at the last minute. He has only to look at the mirror this morn to determine who should bear the loss.

Take a look at the score card during his thirty five month tenure as Sports Minister when Lanka lost 15 Test matches and won 13; lost 42 ODI’s and won 22; lost 23 T 20’s and won only 8. And since the infamous jibe at cricketers’ tummy extension made in June this year, the score card reads that Lanka has lost 4 tests and won 3; lost 15 ODI matches and lost all 4 T 20’s played.

And consider whether he should not be the first to be called off the field? Off loaded from his high horse sporting pedestal. Whether he is the Jonah of Lanka’s cricket? The man at whose mind and mouth, the blame for Lanka’s humiliating defeats, as witnessed last week when Lanka lost to India by innings and 239 runs, should be laid? Where the ball ultimately rolls to a stop?

For when the great scorer comes to write against the Lankan team’s name, he will not write whether they won or lost but how the sport’s minister played the game.

In July this year Sports Minister Dayasiri Jayasekera was compelled to read a prepared speech in halting English before television cameras. At the tail end of his brief speech, he said: “And let the bat er better side win keeping the best tradition of the gentleman’s game “Disce Ammata Disce Discade”.
He may have got his Latin wrong and he can’t be faulted for his faux pas for it would have all seemed Greek to him. But his reference to Royal’s motto Disce Aut Discede – of course minus the ‘ammata’ part Dayasiri stumbled in his painful rendition – holds true. Not only to a great many Royalists in the government squad but to him as well.

Perhaps the time has come when he must follow the advice he gave to budding cricketers that day, learn or depart. Having neither learnt nor done his duty as the sports minister except to throw the ball to another, perhaps the time has arrived for him to quit.