Poson Poya day traditional is a calm and serene affair with the majority of the Buddhists in Sri Lanka engaged in meritorious deeds while the others while their time away attending to their domestic chores as fun and frolic joints are being given an official holiday. However the Poson Poya day of the year 2008 took a different twist, phone calls were bustling round the city hub with a rumour travelling faster than lightning to the effect that the Sri Lanka cricket Interim Committee which is presently led by controversial World Cup winning captain Arjuna Ranatunga has been dissolved and fresh elections which are now overdue by leaps and bounds call for. Even a hasty web page picked up the story in a bid to beat the rest.

By late evening the story also began to take shape and it was learned that two of the most important people also pertaining to sports and even other events had a discussion over another favoured employee of SLC and the top notch had ordered that the “Blue eyed man” be kicked out at once and if that does not happen it might as well call up for fresh elections. However the Minister of sports Gamini Lokuge said “There is no truth in that rumour about dissolving of the Interim Committee of Cricket, but if I could do so I would not hesitate in doing it”. This is what he lamented when The Sunday Times Musings contacted him on the current issue.

Under the Sports law that prevails in this country, all sports entities come under the scrutiny of the Ministry of Sports. If the Ministry feels that any of these entities do not conform to the required standards it reserves the right to dissolve the elected body and install an interim committee until fresh elections could be called up. However Sri Lanka being Sri Lanka even the English Dictionary could be proved wrong. It is a well known fact now that the interim committees that have been appointed to some sports bodies have outlived their usefulness and thus become almost permanent committees and cricket by far the most popular sport in Sri Lanka is a direct victim of this.

When there were misdeeds taking place even in the properly elected bodies, this very column took up its stance and fought against them. We urged the authorities to take notice of the happenings and take remedial action. Remedial action was taken and the hands have changed from John to Aaron and Sri Lanka Cricket does not know where it is perched right now.

When the hot chair position changed from Jayantha Dharmadasa to Arjuna Ranatunga for no other apparent reason than a political manipulation which was completely outside the realms of cricket, the white clad former skipper gave two telling messages in his opening speech at a gathering that was marked as one of the most attended media events. First he spelled out that he was going to work with his cricketing brethren and also get their views into focus while pulling out cricket from the abyss that it was at that time.

Secondly he also made it very clear that cricket had no place for glory seeking businessmen, but it belongs to cricketers themselves it was up to them to take the game forward. However when I asked recently from another cricketer who also played a great role in bringing Sri Lanka Cricket to what it is now, he was of the view that cricket belonged to cricket and no individual could stake claim to it and what any one could do is to work towards the development of the game so that we could create a strong national grid that could hold its own against any of the challenges that the modern day sport could pose. For this one cannot make a difference between cricketers and businessmen. For instance he said that there are cricketers who have played the game even at the highest level and also become very successful businessmen while there have been businessmen and other administrators who have made indelible contributions to the game of cricket in their own inimitable styles.

Going back to transparency statement by Ranatunga one wonders what happened to it. A while after he took over only a section of the SLC is aware of the happenings while the rest are a silent unhappy lot.
Up high on the list of confidence is a man with a very ….. very dubious past who even was accused of impersonating at a public exam and has an ongoing case for fraud. Even another charge against him which cropped up lately was swept under the carpet.

At the same time in spite of being the World Cup winning captain and the man in charge of Sri Lankan cricket – in short “the mentor of the game” – Arjuna Ranatunga utters in India that it is India who is going to win the Asia cup this time. But, what would the Lankan cricketers feel when they go to Pakistan to defend their ‘plum’ which they won a while ago? A statement of this nature by a senor cricketer and now an administrator is quite unbecoming.

One need not have played the game at the highest level to make his contribution back to the game. For instance how much grade one cricket and upwards did the most successful ever coach in the history of the game – Australian John Buchanan engage himself in? What right did he have to talk cricket to players in the calibre of McGrath, Warne or the Waugh brothers? Didn’t he provide amazing results?
Right at present what Sri Lanka needs is the game to flow in the right direction.

We can see it happening in some quarters, but that too is happening as a result of some individual efforts and not through some planned national cricket policies. The stage is not a pretty sight to see. So we appeal to the authorities to take no notice of individuals, if it is the election to cricket that is the need of the moment does it. Cricket must be saved at all costs.