E Rodrigopolle: Cricket selectors are laughing (11 May 1998)

Monday 11, May 1998

Cricket selectors are laughing

E Rodrigopolle

The easiest thing today is to comment like wise owls after the event. And we have cricket critics who are experts at that. Anyway that is the game they know best and that is how they will continue to play.

After the tour of South Africa the cricket selectors were lined up and fired at for absolutely no reason. In picking the team to SA they did it to the best of their ability and according to the requirements in conditions prevailing in SA.

Knowing the awesome power of the Proteas in their conditions and the thunderbolts that their pacemen were going to direct at our batsmen, the selectors should not be faulted for plonking for experience.

True the experienced men did not perform as expected and this has led to the selectors having to cop a lot of stick. But the selectors are men who know what it is to be out in the middle and they are men who have experienced the trials and tribulations that is common with cricketers. the selectors are having a hearty guffaw at the criticism and apparently are enjoying it.

It is said that experience is the great teacher.

When our experienced batsmen failed against the fearsome pace of Donald, Pollock, Telemachus and company, to think that our spring chickens could have stood up to them would be very poor thinking.

At this point it is appropriate to recall the disaster that struck Marvan Atapattu when he was first picked to play for Sri Lanka as a schoolboy. Atapattu was thrown to the wolves as it were by being asked to play on a wicket that was turning like a top and against the best spin bowlers in the world at that time against India.

What happened on that tour and the years that Atapattu took to recover from that trauma is still being recalled. Probably the selectors had Atapattu's misfortune in mind when they gave the senior and experienced men the nod to SA.

Had some of our young batsmen been asked to face Donald, Pollock and Telemachus, the experience would certainly have been a nightmarish one and may have gone to do more harm than good for their future.

Now the time is right with the visit of the Kiwis to blood the youngsters. And that is what the selectors have rightly done. they have chopped off some of experienced men and have infused new blood.

It may be argued that a couple of young players could have been taken and played in the friendlies. But then the friendlies are meant to get your big league playing eleven in form. So the youngsters would not have got a game. They would have been tourists.

Now that the selectors have fearlessly acted and thrown in new blood, they must give those performing against the Kiwis continuity and even book their flights to England. Not to do so would mean to discourage the youngsters.

And we hope that the youngsters would grab the opportunity and cement their places in the national team. As for Tillekeratne, Pushpakumara, Chandana, and Sajeewa de Silva who have been dropped, it is not the end of the line. They have a lot more cricket left in them. It is for them to make it their business to hug the headlines in domestic cricket and come back again.

Cricket and its development in South Africa is well organised and in this aspect Sri Lanka can learn a lot from them. Good then that the CB will be sending Abu Fuard to have first hand knowledge of their system.

One leaf that the local CB will do well take of the South Africans is to allow the Chief Executive a lone hand. Dr. Ali Bacher is king almighty and the UCBSA have implicit faith and trust in him and allows him a free hand. There is no hassle and he has continued to deliver. Cricket is what it is in SA because Bacher is allowed to decide. There is no necessity for him to answer to anybody.

Sri Lanka's Chief Executive Dhammika Ranatunga who has also been a cricketer and who knows the ills that ails the game should be similarly treated. At the moment he is handcuffed somewhat.

The CB must give him a free hand and see how he goes !

Source :: Daily News (https://www.lanka.net)