It’s like a huge tree covering a vast area in the woods. Though it grew big under favourable conditions it really has no planned solidity underfoot because it grew off a seed that fell on the surface.
Sri Lankan cricket is quite alike. When the white sahib brought it to the country and indulged in it as a passtime the locals picked it up as if it was their own and it grew fast unplanned. There were other seeds also that were strewn around like rugby, hockey, athletics, football and even netball. Those too survived in the same wood but the circumstances for them were not as healthy as the main passtime of the Lankan folks – cricket.
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| Most times Graeme Swann was more effective than the local spinners during the two match series. (Pix by Amila Prabhoda). |
During the past few weeks we have been discussing the evolution of the game from the school cradle to the national grid. We were also very much perturbed about the lack of national cap material churning out of the silo on a regular basis.
Yet, there is one aspect that we still have not delved into, probably due to an oversight. It is the afterschool scenario where cricket is sustained as a game. This keeps the numbers battle-ready to meet the country’s international cricketing demands.
The subject matter is sustenance of the game in clubs and the administrators handling the affairs in a professional manner with a national cricket policy. Or are we letting the boat rock as the sea churns and just wait for the results to arrive?
While digging deep into the matter, the first reverse that we noticed was the way that the local club tournaments are held. The club tournaments have become detrimental and short sighted and as a result they have failed to supply cricketers of substance to the national grid.
Not that we condone the Indian Premier League tournament, but, where talent scouting is concerned it is certainly a yardstick. Just for argument sake take Australia, South Africa or even the West Indies and make a count of how many periphery players are involved with this masquerade? But for Sri Lanka, besides fast bowler of repute Nuwan Pradeep Fernando who was bowled out of the count at the nets by the Royal Challengers before he wore the national crest during the IPL round four, no other periphery cricketer has been considered so far.
The argument is the local club cricket tournament is below par. The wickets produced are slow, low turners and not helpful for seamers in general. We have seen spinners beginning the bowling operation on the first day of a four day division one premier league game.
The club officials are happy. But, the wickets even do not help the cause of the spinners. On these under prepared wickets even an average spinner could get a lot of purchase, so the bowler does not have to seek ways and means for his victims. The majority of the work load is done by the wicket itself. Yet, when these bowlers get the international break, they are exposed. While quite an ordinary spinner is troubling the local batsmen the local spinners are struggling for any assistance in local conditions.
Then the next reversal is that under the above conditions, the local seamers hardly come into the fray. According to a senior Sri Lankan coach, most seamers in the circuit get fewer than one hundred overs during the entire season.
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| Confident Rangana proves a point |
When one analyses the situation, the Lankan national cause faces double defeat in this manner. It is accepted that the prolonged international exposure and his own self-confidence had enabled left armer Rangana Herat to perform at this scale at international level. One can just query as to how much local cricket he has played lately. In the post-Murali era bowlingwise he is the only light at the end of the tunnel. A bit more regularity in national exposure and self-confidence also may help off spinner Suraj Randiv, but, the rest of the spinning brood are yet miles away from the winning post.
We do have slow low turners, but, Sri Lanka cannot produce the third spinner to keep knocking on the door.
It was not long ago that the English spinner Graeme Swann relished the Lankan conditions and gave the local batsmen more than food for thought while the local spinners were seemingly not as sharp.
The seam bowlers who do not get their fair share of the operation do not get shaped for lengthy operations. As a result when it comes to international exposure where a seamer has to bowl his twenty overs -- the least for an inning – the bowlers get injured.
Then comes the batting scenario. Last season, around 65 centuries were scored in the Premier League Tier ‘A’ tournament. Yet according to top insiders who are looking closely at these developments, the bowling that they faced was not up to standard, and when it comes to international cricket these cricketers may tend to struggle for survival.
Another accusation is that there are twenty club teams that play first class cricket in Sri Lanka – Premier League Tier ‘A’ and Premier League Tier ‘B’. Now it is learned that the Tier ‘A’, where the accent is and the national selectors keep a tab on, most of the teams lack quality bench strength. The reason being most of the better players who have to fight for a place in the Tier ‘A’ opt to go down to the Tier ‘B’ and even be out of the limelight yet continued to play first class cricket. This is a direct result of around 60 first class cricketers who get breaks during the club off season to play cricket as club professionals in England.
What the country needs at this hour is a strong domestic tournament, which could churn out international players on a regular basis.
We even learn that there have been calls to scrap the Tier ‘B’ tournament and make it a lower division tournament and let the selectors and the good players revolve round the top ten clubs and make it a tournament worth its status. But, club politics and yearning for seats at the SLC keep the officials from taking good decisions that would enrich the local tournament.
The crux of the matter is here. All these monitoring and the gauging is done by professionals whose job is to harness the game and make the game played within the island more meaningful to Sri Lanka’s international cricket cause. Yet, however much the officials mark out, if a decision could hurt office bearers’ vote or votes at the end of the term the very suggestions that come up for ratification gets steamrolled.
We say the destiny of Sri Lankan cricket cannot be held for ransom by any petty official who gets an SLC seat through a vote or uncontested. It is the Cricket Committee and the SLC officials who are good cricketers with credentials should hold those positions and be the decision makers. The simple reason being that they look at the whole perspective through a very professional cricketing angle minus petty politics – that should be Sri Lanka’s National Cricket Policy. |
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