Sports

Sports

Open sesame
By S.R. Pathiravithana
“And they lived happily ever after”. How many times in our life time have we read about this beautiful ending to a story that sometimes had rather a very gory mid-run. However our earnest hope is that in this story that we are going to unfold within the next few hundreds words would have a “happily ever after” ending and stay that way forever.

For the past few years we, here in this column have not only been musing but shouting our throats dry looking at the sorry state of affairs in our junior cricket whilst not being able to find the “Prince Charming” to put things right and convert this gravel valley into a bed of roses like the way it once was -- the most beautiful in the whole wide world.

Like we have stated before, a good two to three decades ago, Sri Lanka School cricket or call it cricket at under 19 level was on or par with any other competitor in the arena or else even better than them. Mind you it was the pre-Test status era and still we churned out cricketers from our schools who could match or surpass the skills of their contemporaries who had been playing top grade cricket for half a century or more.

Then came the slide in the mid-eighties. The SLSCA took full control over the fate of the game at school level and ironically they bit more than they could chew. The result was – that cricket was broad-based in the island and thus seeped into every nook and cranny, but at the same time in a very unprofessional manner. The end result of this was seemingly pathetic. The standard of cricket which was on a very high level gradually crashed to the level of getting beaten by our minnow neighbour Bangladesh on a regular basis. However early last week one by one the news lines began to strike.

Finally after three decades of slumber the local cricket authorities had taken note of the debacle and were planning to prop the “almost dead giant”. So in a bid to get closer to their endeavour The Sunday Musings dug into the thoughts of none other the president of the SLC – Jayantha Dharmadasa.
Dharmadasa began “When we were schooling the structure was such we had the Anura Tennekones to Arjuna Ranatunges coming into the national side and staying there for a given period of time. However now there are players who come in and go out, but cannot sustain their places in the national side. Actually what we see is a shortcoming of the system.

“The schools can not afford the fees demanded by good coaches and as a result they have to go to the ones with lesser skills or else to find the balance money from the parents. When the parents pump in the money to sustain the coach, obviously the coach is under obligation to the parents. In such manner the schools were facing various difficulties of providing the correct infrastructure to the schools like coaches, wickets and other allied facilities for good cricket. Nothing had been done and now we have identified such lack.
“Now we have appointed Provincial Coaches followed by district coaches, club coaches and finally the school coaches.

Starting from the tender age of under thirteen, under fifteen, under seventeen etc… you must catch them young at the under thirteen and under fifteen levels if you are going to correct them. It must be done at this stage or else this becomes a difficult process. Moreover now we have identified and got the right people to man these areas. Besides this we are also having a dialogue with the education authorities who are in charge of the schools and get them also involved in the development process of cricket at school level.
“In addition to this we are also hoping to install Astro-turfs on needy grounds so that cricket in those provinces will automatically develop.

In short we will leave no stone unturned till we bring back junior cricket back to its past glory. “At the same time the SLC will have the SLSCA within its own premises from this month onwards unlike in the past where it was needed only for the vote. We are hoping to speak to the Minister of Education and the Minister of sports and see how this process could help Sri Lanka Cricket. For instance you must go out of Colombo and see. If you travel down to Matara or Anuradhapura and see nothing has been done, we should consider ourselves lucky that we even have got one or two from the hinterland of the country.

“Last year we spent Rs. 85 million on ‘A’ team cricket for about seventy players. Now we have brought it down to 30 players and are concentrating on them. Even in the national team we have identified 23 players. Now we have seen to it that we have a feeder point from the ‘A’ squad into the national squad. Besides this we have the development squad.

“In addition we have appointed Champaka Ramanayake as fast bowling coach and Ruwan Kalpage as spin bowling coach. Then we are also planning to upgrade the Max Academy to a position where even the national players could come and have a stint especially while recuperating after an injury
Well ….Well …. Well, very timely and very impressive indeed! Finally it seems that the SLC has discovered the miracle cure for its deepest wound.

However here is one word of caution! A new scheme means pouring in more money into the system. Pouring new money into the system means more people queuing up with their spoons, forks and plates for their share of the pie. It would be good as far as things move in the right direction and reach its final destination unscathed. But knowing how the wheel turns round here I fervently hope it would not turn into a “Andi Hathdenage kenda heliya (broth of the seven beggars).

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