As a faithful Sri-Lanka supporter (since my somewhat belated embrace of that most noble of sports), it pains me to realize that we may have seen the last of Marvan Atapattu on the international stage. As I dug through the various accounts of his gradual relegation to outsider, I was struck by the callous, inflexible and often quite wrong player-selection strategies of the selection board: Ashantha de Mel, Don Anurasiri, Ranjith Madurasinghe and Jayanth Seneviratne. de Mel has long championed the blooding of new players at the expense of older, more accomplished players–regardless of the situation or the batting/bowling averages of the youngster to be elevated. In the past, he has gone so far as to say that SL shouldn’t look for talented spinners as fast-medium bowlers will carry the burden of wicket-taking.
Thilina Kandamby was one of the victims of this strategy and has languished for years on the A-team as a result. Young Chamara Kapugedera, a more promising story (Kandy, woooot!), was given several test and ODI opportunities throughout 2006 and is now thankfully at least on the A-team as vice-captain for the tour of Zimbabwe. Dilruwan Perera has yet to be seen in competition above the a-level, although he was included on the 20/20 team, and the current craze seems to be for medium-fast bowlers without enough pace or variations to trouble batsmen. It would be nice to see someone like a Malinda Warnapura be given more than a few chances in the Test side (instead of shuffling him off to the A team after a few disappointments and one excellent innings) or giving Kaushal Lokuarrachchi more consistent opportunities to showcase his biffing and leg-break abilities.
All of this could be achieved, of course, by having all the A-level players participate in a professional league like the IPL, where they could routinely face higher-level competition instead of beating up on domestic competition. I’m sorry, but Chanaka Welegedera’s destruction of Tamil Nadu in the Gopalan Trophy isn’t making me any more comfortable about his debuting against Australia on their home grounds.
A caveat:
There were two rather sterling outcomes under the reign of de Mel: to let Mahela Jayawardene continue as captain and relenting to popular pressure and sending Sanath Jayasuriya to England in 2006. They were both outcomes–not the results of deliberation by the board, but simply a logical progression from winning captain to permanent captain and adding experience to a side then foundering in England and coming off of a disastrous home series against Pakistan. An abacus, unassisted by human hands, could have made these calculations.
I wonder what de Mel really does store in his dome? Is it a space even more convoluted and murky than those of the Pakistani and Indian selectors? Do images of his svelte, younger self bounding into the crease crowd out images of Murali taking 700 test wickets? Or does he seek to change the trajectory of SL’s cricketing fortune? Will he succeed? I, for one, hope not.
(all photos courtesty of Cricinfo.com–or as it’s popularly known, my best friend at work)
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