Just 3000 kilometers away from Colombo, on 17th March 1996, came a team of lions from a small island, a team – nobodies in the cricketing world of India and Australia and England – that stamped their authority on the international stage. Sri Lanka, led by Arjuna Ranatunga in Lahore hammered the Australians right out of the park and claimed their first-ever ICC Cricket World Cup.
This event will forever be known within the cricketing world probably as the biggest underdog story. With minnows of the said world, Sri Lanka took the global stage by storm. The rampant Lankans with the help of an unbeaten 107 from Aravinda de Silva clinched the title at Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore. It had to do with luck in the semis where India got eliminated due to a rare event of crowd hooliganism, but their development after that day at Lahore in international cricket has nothing to do with luck. With a pool of talent coming through taking over the national team, they progressed to become a force to be reckoned with.
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Fast forward to the 2010s. Sri Lankan cricket transformed from mere underdogs in 1996 to serious contenders who, on their day, could beat any opposition with a pretty balanced side. A formidable Sri Lankan side had tasted two dismal losses against Australia in the 2007 World cup final and Pakistan in the 2009 ICC World T20, with another narrow defeat at the hands of India at the Wankhede stadium in Mumbai in the 2011 world cup final. After all the hardships and regular shortcomings in multiple finales, the Lankan brigade tasted silverware when they lifted the 2014 T20 World Cup in Bangladesh.
From 1996 to 2014, everything except the final losses seemed to optimistic for the Lankan team. But the 2015 ODI World Cup in Australia and New Zealand proved to be a roadblock in the ever sailing Sri Lankan cricket. The tournament ended in a shocking loss with a dismal performance against the Proteas, proving to be a big episode which then changed the course of what was a beautiful run from 1996. The heavyweights that carried the nation’s hopes on their backs, Kumar Sangakkara – who had scored four consecutive tons in that tournament – and Mahela Jayawardene bid adieu to international cricket. All the success that they had for more than a decade had been with these two in the side, alongside Tilakratne Dilshan who himself left the international stage a year later.
But what was to come, a few had been talking about, the calamity was bigger than what anyone could have predicted. A free sailing cricketing nation that had a lot of success over the years to go down so easily with the retirements of two or three players was something a bit hard to digest.
Although moving on to start fresh after the retirement of greats who serve abundantly to their teams is not a new thing in sports, the condition of Sri Lankan cricket now makes one wonder about this a bit more vaguely. The way their cricket went downhill makes us think about the sad reality that is the masking of the whole cricketing fraternity in Sri Lanka by the likes of legends in Sangakkara, Jayawardene, Muralitharan, and Dilshan, the figures that covered up for otherly mediocre pool of cricketers somehow.
The cracks that these players taped didn’t only hide the mediocrity of the lot, but also everything going inside the governing body of Sri Lanka cricket. Muttiah Muralitharan in 2017 stated that they were spotting talent in the country but they didn’t know how to play. The statement that initially seemed like an over-exaggerated one, has now actually transpired to be true to some extent. The actual sorry state according to him was due to the lack of basics and the effort and desire of the individuals which was majorly lacking, unlike the time he donned the blue stripe.
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But everyone wants to have a look at the bigger picture. The bigger picture here would be not just the retirement and them being unable to replace the whole pool but how they failed so badly. It all leads us to the wrongdoings of the board which is not just the selection of the players and chances they are provided with, but the whole structure of the cricket fraternity in the island nation. To start with the local structure, there have been 17 terms of the heads in the Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) since 1995, which makes one think about it for once. The instability and the politics involved for power hunting at the core shows only one thing: how lucky they were in having the players that they had before 2015 who kept the hopes of the whole nation going.
The players have regularly been vocal about the lack of chances and playing time they get domestically for preparing for the big matches and keeping them match-fit. And again, players getting dropped without being given proper chances in the big arena never helped either. Sri Lanka cricket has never been well administered for years. The governing body has never been a good one, neither to itself, nor to its players. The shouts of Chaminda Vaas getting the chances in the national team when he was washed out because of his political relations raised questions in the late 2000s. Even when Kumar Sangakkara publicly criticized the board for not dropping the declining Sanath Jayasuriya in his 40s was unheard of. Players have even raised questions about salaries being left unpaid in time which doesn’t show the signs of a good management system at all.
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It only shows that it wasn’t the management that actually had a major role in their success whenever they tasted any. While the board always interfered in selecting players and coaches without any obedience, they never prepared a proper domestic channel to churn out talent and make them ready for the big stage. The only major way of selection for the forthcoming series now is a short tournament that they hold beforehand to filter the pool of players, not allowing the players to showcase their abilities in such a short span. Any administrator that surged to the powers only tried to control the Sri Lankan cricket’s cyclone with a mere umbrella. No former players have expressed their feelings of wanting to help stabilize the road ahead because of the apathy that exists in the management. While the likes of Jayawardene and Muralitharan are taking their jobs managing different franchises around the world and have had success, the worrisome management has never let them come back and take over the national team.
And now that their vanquishing has already commenced, the board has not done anything consequential to get the soul of Sri Lankan cricket back to where it belonged, it is only hoping for the best from a vulnerable pool of players that can get kicked out from the team with a plethora of pressure on their shoulders. And with all this, there might come a day when Sri Lankan cricket oozes out from the rock they’ve been down under, with a complete revamp. Maybe getting back one of their icons to coach the team or to handle the administration is a solution. Or else, there might even come a day they will lose their mojo in international cricket and vanish indefinitely – anything that follows is a close watch for cricket fans.