Sports

Sports

Rotation: Pride and prejudice
By S.R. Pathiravithana
Dilshan gets a bitter birthday present, read a banner headline on the Sports page of a recent Daily. It went on to say, Sri Lanka middle order batsman T.M. Dilshan who turned 28 has been dropped for the two Test series against Pakistan, as the national selection committee opted to persist with some of the younger players.

Flying back home from the side that entered Pakistan originally for the Paktel ODI series were T.M. Dilshan along with openers Avishka Gunawardena, Saman Jayantha, fast medium bowler Nuwan Zoysa and leg spinner Kaushal Lokuarachchi.

Joining the squad for the two Test series were Jehan Mubarak, Ian Daniel, Thilan Samaraweera, (all batsmen) and Rangana Herath (left-arm leg spin) Lasith Malinga (right-arm fast medium) and Romesh Kaluwitharana (Wicket-keeper batsman?).

The day after the announcement of the team the Chairman of selectors Asantha de Mel came out with a scathing attack on the tour-management who were visibly unhappy with some of the changes that had taken place.

This move also started a verbal barrage between the selectors and the touring team. "Ashantha de Mel, has hit out at the Sri Lanka team management and accused them of being "selfish" and "not being national-minded" in team selections.

"It has come to a stage that the selection committee felt that we have to reduce some of the options in order to get the team management to play them," said de Mel, referring to the young players. "We send the youngsters saying that we are going to groom them, but they are never given a chance to play on the tour. They come back and by the next tour they are left out. "Our thinking is that we have to start now to include one or two youngsters. We have potential in Jehan Mubarak, Thilina Kandamby and Ian Daniel. It is not that we have dropped Dilshan completely from the side, but we feel that there should be some sort of rotation, like the Australians are doing with their team. We want to try out one or two players at any given time.

"We sent Kandamby on the Pakistan tour to get some sort of exposure internationally, but unfortunately he has not been given a chance to play even against a weak opposition like Zimbabwe".

Then a couple of days later Sri Lanka who lost twice to Pakistan in the round robin games, came back in grand style to score a 168 run win over the home team to take charge of the Paktel cup. With this win skipper Marvan Atapattu threw the cup at the selectors face. Commenting on de Mel's utterances Atapattu said "That can be one reason for our performance. It was a big motivating factor for us to show what we are capable of. We don't go on the park to lose".

Volleying of words of this nature between people who choose the players and the players who perform in the middle does not in itself do any good for the game at large. But, to put the blame on one party they themselves must do things right.

The selectors say that there should be a system of grooming players for the future. If so, is it that they are only looking at batsmen and bowlers? Why aren't they looking at the wicket-keeping department? One wonders the wisdom of selecting a player who is thirty-five years old to keep wickets in Romesh Kaluwitharana when there are two wicket keepers in the side already. Then comes the argument that in form wicket-keeper batsman Kumar Sangakkara now has become too precious a commodity to spend five days donning pads and then T.M. Dilshan who has scores of 0, 63, 100, 83, 104, 6, 0, 43, 0, 31, 10, dnb, 17n.o., 14, 35, 21, 25,1, 3, 23 n.o., in his last twenty Test innings is dropped from the side making way for rotation.

If grooming for the future is the key factor is Romesh Kaluwitharana the most suitable candidate for this position? Hadn't Sri Lanka been grooming arguably the best wicket keeper in Prasanna Jayawardena? Then some one might take time to question Kaluwitharana's batting? Well … Kaluwitharana's last twenty innings read 1, 16, 9, 4, 6, 4, 33, 42, 0, 76, 20, 10, 23, 34, 14, 33, 19, 7 and 4 and 1 in the first test match against Pakiistan at Faisalabad. Not a great feat by any standard.

Then where has the grooming for the future policy of the national selectors gone? If grooming for the future is made a policy it should be a planned one. There should be no ad hoc manoeuvring of any nature when it comes to selection of a national side. It should be a well laid out policy that is well taken by the selectors and players like gospel. In the eyes of a national cause there should be no favourites or automatic choices.

Top