The Sunday Times Sports - To Sir....with love

If you can give back some of the things that you have taken while you were on your way up the ladder, that is always considered a noble act indeed. Ironically, in this mechanical age where men think like machines and they build machines to think like men sometimes, these noble deeds have very little value or go unseen. Nevertheless let me take your time for a while to talk about a bunch of cricketers who are bent on giving back some of their life’s experiences so that they could make the lives of the coming generation of cricketers that much more hassle free and more meaningful.

The story began in the last millennium. It was a while after Sri Lanka had completed its greatest achievement in the field of sport by taking the Cricket World Cup beating Australia in the final at Lahore. The Present President of the Sri Lankan Cricketer’s Association Pramodya Wickremasinghe was a member of that champion outfit. Explaining to Sunday Musings about how this Cricketer’s Association came into being the former Sri Lanka fast medium bowler began: “There was a time in my mid-career when I pointed out some of the mistakes made while drawing up our contracts by the then administrators of Sri Lanka Cricket. They tried to silence me and then saw to it that my life in the cricketing arena was phased out from that point onwards.

“In the aftermath of this, I kept wondering if it would be a good idea if we could form a kind of voice of the cricketers so that the administrators just cannot take them for granted. The move to form an association of this nature was in the air from the time of Ravi Ratnayake and Co. but due to various reasons and circumstances it never materialized. At that juncture I, with the support of cricketers like Muttiah Muralitharan, Roshan Mahanama, Don Anurasiri, Graeme Labrooy and a lawyer by the name of Shiral Laktilleke launched the Association at the turn of the century in the year 2000. Even President Mahinda Rajapaksa who was the then minister of Fisheries was one our advisors at that time.

“The criteria for membership in the association was drawn up thus: To get membership either you have to be a Test/ODI cricketer or else a player who has played more than twenty first class (division one) cricket. The Modus Operandi of the Association was to look into the welfare and rights of the incumbent and past cricketers at National and Club level and up to now they have a membership of over 400 past and present cricketers”. Pramodya added “Originally our constitution said that the incumbent captain of the national side automatically becomes the President of the Association too. However after two of the National captains were made to disassociate themselves from us by the authorities, we changed the pattern to the effect that any member could become elected as President.”

Federation of International Cricketers Association.

“As mentioned before our objective was to look into the welfare and rights of the cricketers. At the same time we also have affiliated ourselves with our world body – the Federation of International Cricketers Association. However in Asia we are the only ones who have sought the membership of this World Body. As a matter of fact out of the Asian countries we have the most vibrant association. In the recent past we have mediated with the board and have seen to it that the cricketers’ contracts have been drawn up accordingly and besides that we have other things that would bring more benefits to cricketers – present and past. At the same time I must mention that the present Interim Committee is working quite cohesively with us.” Speaking on what the Association has drawn up and launched over the six years of its existence Pramodaya said “So far we have launched a scheme to purchase cricketing gear for the needy players and also mooted a scheme where we get a certain percentage off the annual contract fee of the national cricketers and distribute the sum among the first fifteen players named by the clubs in the premier league. Then we also were the first to financially help all cricketers who were affected by the tsunami disaster. Besides this we have helped past cricketers who are hospitalized and also cricketers who need treatment after accidents and injury.”

The SLCA is still on to more projects and at the same time they are becoming more demanding and challenging. “First of it is the Pension scheme that they have launched. The former Sri Lanka opening bowler described ‘Our latest project is that we have launched a pension scheme for past first class cricketers who are over fifty-five years. At present we have identified ten such cricketers and very soon we will put this into action. With this scheme all these cricketers who are beneficiaries will receive approximately Rs.120, 000/- per annum for the rest of their lives. However the biggest project that we are hoping to put on stage is to select the Cricketer of the Year awards scheme. This will somewhat be in line with Australia’s Allan Border Awards scheme. Besides the Cricketer of the Year award there will be other awards like the Best Batsman, Best Bowler, Most Promising Cricketer, etc. Without stopping at this we are also going to recognize the Best Umpire of the Year and several other awards on the same lines. We will put this programme into action with the next Premier League Tournament and the awards ceremony will be held every December on a very grand scale”.

The SLCA president finally added “We are not an organization that is in competition with the cricket administration in the country. We are an organization that is looking to upgrade the standards of the cricketers and their lives on a voluntary basis. One of the main efforts is to take a big burden off the shoulders of the cricket authorities which would make their mechanism that much more easy”.