5th Column

My dear Dayasiri,
I thought I must write to you when I heard that you had intervened to recall our one day cricket team from their tour to neighbouring India. I heard that you had literally ordered them off the plane while they were settling in putting their seat belts on. Ah, what courage to take such decisive action!

In fact, if you ordered them to stay at home without going to India at all, it would have made sense. It was only a few weeks ago that we were beaten by India in our own backyard losing all the games across all formats and yet, here we are travelling to India again. Rather masochistic, or so I thought.

This is not the first time you had criticised our team selections. Why, there was that spat a few months ago when you said that our players were not fit. That was when Malinga said that there were many armchair critics who didn’t know what they were talking about and implied you were a ‘rilawa’!

You say that you were annoyed because the team was not submitted to you for approval. Apparently, there is a law which requires you to ratify all team selections three weeks before they go on tour. You say that the team was sent to you for approval only a few hours before the players were to depart.

If that is what the law says, I suppose that is what we must do. But pardon me, Dayasiri, I do have an issue about this law and what you did. Did you really make any changes to the team after their names were sent to you? I ask only because sometimes the law is an ass – as are those implementing them!

You have told us that you are in charge of some 62 sports. Now, do you really know which players are the best and who should be selected for the national teams in all of these 62 sports? If you did, Dayasiri, I think you would be doing nothing else as Sports Minister except selecting national teams!

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought we had a panel of national selectors for cricket and those gentlemen are paid very high wages to do their job. Now, if you want to sit in your office and override their decisions, why don’t you just sack the lot and save Sri Lanka Cricket some money?

Remember, there was a time when Mahinda maama ordered that Sana, Matara’s version of the master blaster, be included in the team. He was put on a flight to England to join the team. Of course, at that time Sana was a minister in Mahinda maama’s government and was all of forty one years old!

Maybe old habits die hard though Mahinda maama no longer calls the shots. Did you think that what Mahinda maama can do, you can do better? After all, you campaigned for him at the last election, called Maithri a ‘korawakka’ from his election platforms and he is your fellow MP for Kurunegala!

Or is it that, even though you ordered Thisara and his boys to disembark from the aircraft, you did not alter the team selection? Did you simply keep them in the country for one more day to make a point- even if it meant that the team would have one day less in India to prepare for the games ahead?

If that was the case, Dayasiri, is it a case of the cricketers having to postpone their trip, so you could go on an ego trip? And who foots the bill for the cancelled flights of all those players? It is not you, is it? That cost will eventually come out of the pockets of our long suffering cricket fans, won’t it?

You keep reminding us that you want to save cricket in the country. If you really want to do that, you should be making changes in the ‘selection’ of those who run the game instead of interfering with team selections. Or, is it that you don’t have the spine to take on the political clout of the Dark Horse?

Dayasiri, I think you should stick to what you excel in, such as the long jump or the pole vault and leave cricket to gentlemen. So, instead of stopping our cricket team from departing maybe you should abide by your own favourite slogan, ‘disce aut discede’. It means ‘learn or depart’, you know!

Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS: I think I know where you got this habit of scrutinising teams that have been selected. Remember how Maithri had a look at the National List and changed its composition, inserting several who lost at the election? And guess who was among them? The Dark Horse who is the cricket boss, of course!