Now for two years running the Lankan cricketers have been hailed by the ICC – the game’s governing body as the guys who have real passion for the game and yet they play it well within the laws of the game. Thus, the ‘spirit of the game’ has come their way twice over.

Well….that is the scenario that prevails within the Lankan dressing room and the proceedings what takes place once they walk beyond the boundary line. If any Sri Lankan is not proud of this achievement that person should be ashamed of him/herself. At the same time we feel that this is also a very difficult task to accomplish. The reason is that you just do not become a doormat just for the sake of being good. We feel that they look at it in a manner that that you have been more than competitive on and off the field while confining yourself well within the given norms of fair play and good behaviour.

Ironically in Sri Lanka the spirit of the game starts and ends well within its cricket first XV. They form the nucleus of our international cricket and play the game forgetting whatever their personal differences are with only one goal in mind. It is to ‘bring honour and glory’ to their mother land. However the rest of the bunch that is involved with the cricket machinery should follow the Emu and hide their heads in shame.
Since of late whatever happens in Sri Lankan where cricket is concerned ends up with controversy and some one should “Hey! Your Sunday is longer than your Monday”.

AJITH JAYASEKARA: Was he a victim of circumstances ?

Badureliya SC first came into limelight as the hero who stood against the might of Thilanga Sumathipala when the latter was at his ‘cricket power’ peak. They were so indignant that they even took the Thilanga Cricket Administration to courts at one point of time or may be many.

Then when changes were effected to the administration, the Badureliya fortunes also rose phenomenally. So much so that a club situated in the outstation got its home ground in the heart of Colombo. At the same time before one could say ‘Jack Robins’ they were also in the premier division playing along with the bigwigs!

Buying a house at Colombo seven is possible even for the mortal human being provided the right circumstances prevail, but, hobnobbing with the Colombo elite and maintaining it for a given period of time is rather a difficult task. Likewise Badureliya SC got into the main highway, but, could not keep pace with the other high performance vehicles in the mainstream and ended up last in the race at the end of the season. Result – they were to be relegated to the lower division.

Hell with the spirit of cricket and norms of the game, the indignant man he was, he created the path for himself to go to the higher authorities, got the tournament seeding halted and got the interim committee to hang them as the eleventh contender at the eleventh hour. Not to be outdone BRC another club of honour of yesteryear also ran with the wind and saw to it that they too would be hung as the eleventh contender in tier ‘B’ without being relegated to the Sara trophy.

The result was the Tournament Committee Chairman, Ajith Jayasekera howling foul and sending in his resignation and another cricket adminstrator with principle Mahinda Halangoda following suit. This episode became Sri Lanka’s latest cricketing howler and timely we have decided to call it the “Badugate”.

Badugate or not now it slowly but surely is sinking into all of us in no uncertain terms that Lankan cricket is on to a long yawn which we could have easily side-stepped with a little more humility and wisdom. The best examples are the just postponed Champions Trophy and the proposed England tour which is slipping away from us by the minute.

Prior to the cancellation of the Championships in Pakistan, Sri Lanka was named as the alternate venue for the tournament to be held. But, once it was cancelled in Pakistan it was not brought down to Sri Lanka.

Though not spoken loudly in the local or the foreign media every cricket insider knows as to why it was not shifted to Sri Lanka. Then the England tour is the same. The men at the top must be prudent enough to understand and smell what is hot in the environment. Ironically, the men at the top tried to teach the men around them a good lesson for not toeing the line with them and fall in line. Instead they have taught Lankan Cricket a lesson which the future cricketing generations will learn as to who the real culprits are.

Now the reality is that besides two watered down series against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh (now further weakened after the ICL exodus) Sri Lankan does not have any meaningful cricket till June 2009 till they take on Pakistan.

At the same time with the negative developments that are taking place Sri Lanka cannot even think of coming out as a main contender at the Cricket World Cup when it takes place in the Indian sub continent.

At the same time the Lankan cricket selectors make the maximum use of this lull period, round up a youthful team and envisage that they would form the nucleus from 2011 beyond. As a first measure what the authorities could do is to field a very youthful side to take on Zimbabwe and Bangladesh while resting all players who may not go beyond 2011 or less. However it is also not prudent to give thirty-six-year-olds to make their international debuts during this period.

Then at the same time the top Lankan talent has not played in a local tournament that is lean and mean for some time now. One year is a good bar to have a measure. Let them play in the local tournament, with their full concentration and when it comes to the selection of the team to play Pakistan only the top performers in this tournament will be taken in for consideration.