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Aficionados of cricket, the game the British invented and then spread across its imperial empire, will remember that annual encounter played here called “Gentlemen versus Players.”

That stopped several decades ago, not because the British gave up the game in the face of rising competition from its former colonies. It just happened that while they could find players, they could not find any gentlemen to field a team.

This was proved once again when Sri Lanka played its first Test against England at Old Trafford the other day. At one point in the game, the host showed a marked reluctance to play ball with the used ball and requested a ball change.

As many, including some Sri Lankan batsmen, cricket writers, and an Australian MP, insisted that this unexpected (to all but some English players) replacement of the ball in use with another suddenly changed the complexion of the game with our well-settled batsmen the victims.

This is not the first time that Sri Lanka watched, on the first occasion in sheer amazement, England players digging into their box of dirty tricks.

Exactly a decade ago, a huge controversy erupted over English batsman Jos Buttler being run out at the bowler’s end for trying to steal runs by straying out of the crease even before the ball was bowled. Bowler Sachitra Senanayake was accused of doing a “Mankad” when he whipped off the bails, running out Buttler after having warned him twice earlier of his violation of the law.

One who decided to defend Buttler with childish remarks was former England Captain Michael Vaughan, who should have known better that both ICC and MCC rules legitimised such action as I said in my column (June 8, 2014), exposing his shortsightedness, if not his ignorance.

If Sri Lanka learned this one-time gentlemen’s game from our then-colonial master, we also imbibed from London the practice of parliamentary democracy, the value of the franchise, fair elections and other democratic features as opposed to autocratic and authoritarian governance.

While Sri Lankan players—as distinct from the administrators—brought up in the old MCC ‘tradition’ might continue, by and large, to show respect for those gentlemanly ways, our politicians have long abandoned, in the latter half of our independence years, the best features of parliamentary democracy and the mostly honest and cultured ways bestowed on our politicians.

As Sri Lanka heads towards a presidential election in the next few weeks, the breakdown of those early traditions and cultured practices are increasingly becoming evident. Those holding office and living on public funds and their untutored and uncultured henchmen display their corrosive and abusive mentality for fear that the electoral defeat of their masters would drive them into obscurity, if not oblivion, a hope widely held by the people.

It was only in July that the UK held parliamentary elections. The pre-election campaigning showed that the old traditions still hold. The hurling of insults at opposing candidates at public rallies and elsewhere is unheard of, unlike back at our good old isle.

Those who have listened to or read campaign slogans during our presidential election campaign know only too well that falsehoods, misinformation, and deliberate insulting concoctions have featured as the campaign intensified, even leading to fisticuffs during on-camera discussion.

So if England can no longer find gentlemen to play the game, Sri Lanka can no longer throw up gentlemen in its political game as years of experiencing elections and daily politics have shown an increasingly disillusioned populace.

Over the years, the quality, integrity, honesty and genuine concern for the people rather than for themselves have tainted the political landscape to the point that the citizenry has not only lost faith in politicians but even earned public opprobrium.

In fact, the ongoing campaign has shown some of the worst features of domestic politics even though it is a presidential election and not a parliamentary one when the most outrageous political conduct is on display.

But in a way this presidential election campaign has taken a turn for the worse because presidential activities have often seemed to have intermingled with electioneering, as has been a common criticism of both opposing political parties and public observers of the goings-on in the last several months.

A common feature has been the pointing of fingers at the largesse handed out to would-be voters in the way of land grants, gifts of housing rights, subsidised or promises of free fertiliser, free kilos of rice, huge salary increases in the coming budget, and a host of other benefits to a whole cross section of society.

It is quite natural that sceptics and bemused citizenry have begun to ask whether the government and its barrage of ministers would have entered the fray looking like a over generous Father Christmas had there been no elections.

Had there been no elections like the cancelled or postponed local government polls for lack of money as claimed by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, would the country’s executive be so endowed with such unbounded generosity and collective goodness of heart to suddenly feel compassion for a population suffering from the abuse and misuse of political power?

Take, for instance, President Wickremesinghe’s sudden concern for the Muslim community, which had been insulted and betrayed when it was ordered to cremate their dead during the Covid pandemic.

Surely, was it only yesterday that he was made aware of this religious insult hurled at the country’s Muslim community, which had been ordered to violate one of its sacred religious practices? Did he have to wait for two years or more to apologise to a community hurt to the core? Would he have done so with seeming remorse if elections were as distant as the local elections, which he said did not exist?

But there are those who would point their finger at another leading presidential contestant, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and accuse him of being a fake Buddhist when there are political leaders who will step out of Hindu kovils, for instance, with yellow stripes on their foreheads and a red pottu lower down and possibly bare-breasted as though they were true believers.

Limited space does not permit me to say a lot more I have in mind about the fakery that is said and practised and the use of public office in pursuit of political objectives while cross-eyed supporters hurl abuse at opponents because they present a threat to the political ambitions of persons determined to shoot it out in the Last Chance Saloon.

When political acolytes plaster the country with eulogies that paint one man as the sole saviour of this once-blessed nation and opponents who ran away scared, one is reminded of Hamlet’s words:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.

Had Bertolt Brecht remembered this Hamletian saying, he might have reminded Grusha.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later, he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London).