Sunday Times 2
Ranil plans for a 25-year match
View(s):Time: a vital factor in cricket and politics
Come March and a spirit of jollity and frivolity gets into us forgetting all other issues. It started in 1948 and since then we’ve been there for every Royal-Thomian save one year being confined to an ICU and this year, too, we were confined to domestic barracks on doctor’s orders.
The spirit of the month getting into us, we emailed a professional associate, a Royalist, on March 10 that our usual transactions for the week could not go through due to our blood pressure plummeting. However, we were confident that our side would triumph, and so we said: Best of luck to Royal. You need it.
What happened, you all know. We have to eat our own words. So we emailed: Congratulations. Magnificent Royal Victory. The glorious uncertainties of cricket! Certainly, the Thomians were pulped black and blue. It was a glorious Royal victory. But in our opinion media reports which said that the record stand of 229 runs by Dasis Manchanayake and Ramiru Perera wiped out the 70-year-old record for the fifth wicket partnership between P.I. Peiris and G.L. (Konappu) Wijesinghe for 187 runs and also the record for Royal held by Vijaya Malalasekera and C.M. Fernando in 1963 for 165, should be analysed in detail by cricketing pundits.
Both these records were made in two-day matches while the record now being celebrated was made in a three-day match.
The time factor is all-important in cricket and the pressures and strategies in a two-day match particularly to triumph will be much more great and difficult than in a three dayer
This is apparent because international cricket is now being played in three categories: Tests usually go on for five days; and then the Limited Over Matches (50 overs) and the T-20 variety (20 overs).
Would it be fair for all records made before the centenary match — which were two-dayers — be wiped out with much ease in the three-dayers that will follow?
This is not to belittle the Manchanayake-Perera record. It is great and should be a record for the three-day series.
Nonetheless, the Royal-Thomian traditions continue and the victors will continue their song and dance of a Royal victory not only by the players but also by old boys in the reflected glory of the triumph — even at the highest of political levels in mansions of political power.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe addressing the 32nd Interact District Conference held at Temple Trees attended by about 700 students, girls, and boys, from various schools across the island had compared the captaincy of Royal by Manchanayake to that of his presidency when he took over the leadership and the country was in a crisis. Manchanayake’s effective captaincy after a string of defeats in previous matches resulted in the team’s victory at the Royal-Thomian, he said.
Likewise, when he assumed office in July last year the country was experiencing numerous crises such as shortage of food, fuel and fertiliser. Under his leadership, his team was able to end all that and restore economic stability in the last seven months. Sri Lanka was no longer a bankrupt state, he declared.
Wickremesinghe’s claims of victory like that of the recent Royal victory ignore the time factor.
Wickremesinghe claims success was achieved in seven months. Manchanayake took only three days for his victory, it could be assumed from Wickremesinghe’s statement that seven months is a short time to get an IMF loan.
But how would the seven months be spent by a poor man who has no money to feed his starving infants, kept his family going after being unemployed and the aged not being able to find essential medicines for survival, or the prices being too high?
It would be also pointed out that to compare grants of IMF tranches to impoverished countries and the rate of scoring at the Royal-Thomian is absurd. But it was Wickremesinghe who drew the similarity between himself and Manchanayake before hundreds of boys and girls for whatever reason. He ignores the time factor in achieving both results and also Einstein’s theory of relativity that everything in the universe is subject to time.
In cricketing terms, Wickremesinghe appears to be like a batsman closing his eyes and swinging his bat wildly at the ball (Pottae Shots), connecting and running not giving a damn about the consequences. Most of his decisions for which he claims credit are supposed to be IMF recommendations which are causing great political instability in the country such as the spiralling rates of inflation, the cost of living; increased taxes which even top-ranking professionals say are far too high, the price of electricity, and proposals for the sale of state-owned enterprises, opposed tooth and nail by trade unions.
There are also a multitude of protests staged daily throughout the country for which the IMF cannot be blamed such as the suppression of dissent and the attempts made to postpone local government elections as stipulated by the law on the pretext of the Treasury having no funds for elections.
No funds or no votes for the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government? The Opposition keeps asking.
Since the economy will still be in the depths because billions of dollars loaned not only by the IMF but also by countries like India, and China have to be repaid, is it likely that there will be no funds to hold any election for quite a long time? Does it mean once again that Wickremesinghe is ignoring the time factor? When will elections be held?
The Rajapaksa government that keeps Wickremesinghe propped up ends its period of office in constitutional terms in two years but Wickremesinghe gives no indication of calling a general election at any time.
He speaks of Making Lanka another Singapore around 2045.
Thus is he now playing a 25-year match, ignoring the time factor? By that time ‘young Ranil Wickremesinghe’ will be 99 years old.
To his credit, he has successfully accomplished the mission he was entrusted with: Getting the IMF to release the first tranche of its Extended Fund Facility of 3 billion dollars and more from other lending institutions which will provide financial relief but not permanently. Debts have to be repaid, Wickremesinghe himself points out.
We wish him long life but ignoring time limits is not cricket or democratic politics. Will he hold a general election soon?
(The writer is a former editor of The Sunday Island, The Island and consultant editor of the Sunday Leader. He can be contacted at gamma.weerakoon@gmail.com)