Rajpal's Column

6th September 1998

Cricket and that whacky colonial connection

By Rajpal Abeynayake

Sri Lankan Cricket Captain surrounded by the media on his return from the victorious tour of England.

Elle must be the national game of Sri Lanka. Certainly, cricket is the national sport of Great Britain. But, there is not much point talking about symbolic national pastimes. Cricket has now been anointed the national sport of this country by those who love "Englishman's whacky paddle" so much that they'd even claim the game as their own. Never mind. There is an emotional tug that is beginning to be exerted by the game cricket at the heartstrings of Sri Lankans.

Recently, for instance, an indignant reader of this newspaper wrote to me saying that "cricket – ah, Englishman's whacky paddle – is the only thing in recent times that Sri Lankan's could be proud of," or something to that effect. The funny thing was, that this writer did not appear to be your usual case of a man who had recently lost his marbles – you know, quietly turned eccentric. The letter writer made some very astute observations, and wrote with a scholar's command of the language. But, yet he ended up by saying cricket is Sri Lanka's only recent achievement.

So in an era when even sane men have their knees knocking together when they embrace this whackiest of whacky paddle sports, no excuse may be made for discussing the sport in the main section of a national newspaper. Granted that this preamble is itself an excuse of sorts.

But, is it the entertainment value of cricket alone that has created such a lasting impression in the Sri Lankan psyche? Let us look at it this way. On any day, you could go to the Singhalese Sports Club, and bump into any of the high Priests of cricket at their own temple. The Singhalese Sports Club is in itself a puzzling place because you would search in vain there to find a single word of Sinhalese among the varnished name boards that hang about the place. The Sinhalese can have a Sinhalese Sports Club without a word of Sinhalese and not feel self conscious about it. So there is no problem with that. In that backdrop, cricket fits in effortlessly with the rest of the ambiance at this high temple for the sport that Sri Lankans happen to be in love with.

But not until the recent events at Lords and the Oval that it struck me that Sri Lankans take their cricket so personally. The sounds emanating from Lords weren't good at all. Somewhere deep in the national psyche, the nation's inner child was hurt. The sentiment that hung above all the words that were said about the aftermath of our voyage in England was something like "could the Englishmen do this to us?"

For a while, the way the Lake House editorials were going and all of that, it appeared that there would be a strong chance of Sri Lankans severing their diplomatic ties with the old country, (or at least not since David Gladstone did we have such a scare). A perfectly sane friend mentioned to me that the Englishmen were not behaving like Englishmen. I suppose there are enough Sri Lankans behaving like Englishmen to be enough for both countries. When it was pointed out in this column several moons back that Sri Lankan's in a certain British institution in Colombo were behaving as if they were more British than the British, a British friend and journalist observed that the remark was somehow not fair by the British. She said it avers that "if being more British than the British is wrong, there must be something wrong in being British itself." Hmm. Interesting observation, but, isn't it something like "its okay for the British to be British, but not for Sri Lankans to be British. I mean women can be feminine, but does that mean that men should be effeminate?"

But, the aggrieved tone of the Sri Lankans was truly disconcerting because after all they had won the series hands down, and here they were behaving as if they were at a funeral just because they felt led down by the British who were supposed to be gentlemen. If you go into the genesis of this whole post-tour hulabuloo, with the British cricket coach calling our off spinner a "chucker" and all that type of thing, it looks as if we do this "gentleman" thing much better than the British too.

Yet, the kind of hurt that the Sri Lankan's displayed was surprising because it was obvious that the British were only being bad losers. Face it — we will never get the kind of good press from the British newspapers that we would like to have. Even to the genial Sri Lankan supporter Mr. Tony Greig, we will be always the "little Sri Lankans." British bookmakers on the other hand gave Sri Lanka the worst possible odds before the recent series, and here we are supposed to be world champions. The commentators carped that Sri Lankan cricket had not quite arrived and our spinner's performance for them, even after he had got sixteen English batsmen out, was a "fairly impressive display."

All these grapes and sour kind of comments by the British cricketing establishment was a clear sign that the British haven't yet come to terms with the fact that the Sri Lankan team is competent. That's been obvious since the World Cup, because most countries have found it difficult to come to terms with the fact that the Sri Lankan's are actually quite good at this whacky paddle thing.

But, the pros and cons of that can be left to the sports writers to analyse until the cows come home and the test matches are over.

What is more interesting, at least for this columnist, is why the British reaction in particular, left Sri Lankan's close to tears. So, do the British have to say that we are good, for us to be finally and conclusively good? Or, is it just too shocking that the British are after all not gentlemen. (What, after all these years of gentlemanly colonial exploitation ? Can't be old chap, there must be some mistake.) Of course they can't come to terms with the fact that we are good. But we can't come to terms with the fact that we don't need their certificate. We have taken cricket, but the game surely doesn't appear to belong to us, does it? We may have inherited the game, but the British still have the mortgage.

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