5th Column

My dear Dasun and the cricket team,

I thought of writing to you to thank you for your performances at the World Cup. We know you didn’t become champions, and that you were knocked out without making it even to the semi-finals, but your performances have helped us in Paradise immensely, especially Uncle Ranil. I will tell you why.

For the past few weeks, Dasun and the team, most of us in Paradise have been talking of nothing but cricket. Every few days there is a match that you feature in and most of us are glued to our televisions watching every game, despite the power cuts and ignoring Kanchana’s advice to conserve electricity.

With all the focus being on cricket, we have forgotten that this land like no other is still in the midst of a crisis. Nothing has really changed since that crisis began eight months ago except a change at the top. The rest of those who ran our country to ruin are still in charge – and are still at large too!

While you were Down Under playing cricket, Uncle Ranil ensured that a constitutional amendment was passed through Parliament. Most people were more worried about the implications of losing to Namibia than about what happens with our Constitution.

The vote for the amendment showed that the ‘pohottuwa’ is divided, that many among them are planning to desert their sinking ship and take Uncle Ranil’s side. We forgot all that because we were more excited about you beating the Netherlands and qualifying for the rest of the tournament.

In the last few weeks, we were also told that a lady who allegedly defrauded hundreds of millions of rupees, maybe even billions, was arrested. That did make the headlines every now and then but that too was overshadowed by your successes – or the lack of it – whenever a game was played.

Many think it is odd that our Police is clever enough to get to the bottom of such investigations in next to no time but inquiries into other matters drag on for years. I hope none of you have invested with this lady because rumour has it that some others cricketers – or their wives – have done so.

While you were playing cricket, we had a minister’s relative run amok at Yala, creating havoc there with over a dozen vehicles in the Park. Normally, this would have caused a great stir, but we were more concerned about the consecutive losses to Australia and New Zealand which hurt our chances.

The minister, Mahinda Amarey, swore that his son was not involved and said he would retire from politics if he was. He conveniently forgot to say it was his nephew who was involved. He got away lightly because these are trivial matters when there is uncertainty about qualifying for the semi-finals.

Just this week, I feel even the opposition was distracted by cricket. They don’t appear to have put a lot of thought into launching what we thought would be a massive protest against Uncle Ranil and his government, what with so many political parties, trade unions and organisations being involved.

I suspect young Sajith was preoccupied with the must-win game against Afghanistan the day before. Why else would he lead such a protest, with no ‘Plan B’, knowing very well that Uncle Ranil will do everything he can to stop the protest, but not knowing what to do next and simply walking away?

Anyway, Dasun and the cricket team, now that you have been knocked out of the competition, we can start focusing on matters of national importance once again such as who the dual citizens in Parliament are and why we don’t seem to be able to get that much coveted loan from the IMF.

In a way, it is better that you didn’t go on to win the World Cup and had to return home early. When you won the Asia Cup recently, you were given a heroes’ welcome and rode in an open bus from the airport. We wouldn’t be able to do that again – the petrol queues are again getting longer by the day.

Although you didn’t make it to the semi-finals, you achieved something that very few of our teams have done before: it was your performance yesterday which decided who went through to the semi-finals. Since when did we have the power to decide the cricketing fate of England and Australia?

We wish you well, Dasun and the cricket team. We hope all of you return home safely from Down Under after yesterday’s game. You are a privileged lot and are paid quite well but, at the rate our citizens are leaving our shores these days, we won’t be surprised if some of you stayed back!

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS: Dasun and the team, your performances are similar to the ‘aragalaya’. Your success at the Asia Cup gave us hope of greater success at the World Cup. That didn’t happen. Gota maama’s departure after the ‘aragalaya’ also gave us hope of more changes but nothing much has happened since then!