World Cup 2011Transparency
Monday, May 31, 2010
As you would expect of someone who skilfully crafted a match-winning World Cup final century, Aravinda de Silva has been quick to announce that he has a plan for Sri Lanka’s the 2011 challenge.
And as you would also expect of someone who knows what playing in such a high-profile event requires, the little maestro has outlined his thoughts in what is his final column in a Sunday newspaper. These will be spelled out again at a media briefing at Sri Lanka Cricket at Maitland Place today when the man who has engineered the appointment of the selection panel, the new sports minister, C. B. Rathanayake, will introduce the four man team.
Aravinda de Silva… tasked with reviving a World Cup dreamIt is the first time that De Silva has been placed in a position where he can handle selection policy and have a say in coaching matters and is a small step towards assuming a position advocated in these files for some months, that of director of cricket in the country. It is also less than a week ago when this paragraph appeared in a column run on a website dealing with Sri Lanka Cricket, and recognised by ‘The Times’ as one of the top 50 cricket sites in the world.
Under the headline "Sri Lankan selection policy playing with players careers" in My Pavilion Kitbag column the following appeared, "It has been recommended that Aravinda de Silva be approached to help out in selection and guide their thinking and also be used in a consultancy capacity as a coach. It would be a good move, but knowing the little master, he won’t move in that direction unless he has carte blanche in selection issues and coaching policy and that is highly unlikely."
Well, now he has control of one position and this role is central to shaping the direction the team is heading over the next nine months. He agrees that nine months is a tight schedule and one of the new selectors, Ranjit Fernando he will know from his career at Nondescripts, which backs on to Sinhalese Sports Club and where Aravinda played any number of his masterful Premier League club innings over the years.
The point at issue here is how the selectors need to consult with the chosen captain to see what is needed as well as sit down with the coaching staff to map out a programme. This is what De Silva and his team will do. It is the first time that De Silva has been invited to fill the role of a selector and that is seven years since his retirement from the international stage.
As vice-president of SLC under Thilanga Sumathipala’s administration of 2003/2005 before the government, in April 2005, installed the ad-hoc (non-elected committee), Sri Lanka had a healthy cricket establishment with De Silva overseeing a solid coaching structure as well as bringing in John Dyson as coach and setting a template for the future which has slowly disintegrated since the 2007 World Cup final in Bridgetown, Barbados. This new move is seen as the start of solid building structures designed to carry the team forward.
De Silva has kept a close watch on the playing affairs side of the game, especially youth programmes, where he has pursued with enthusiasm an ambitious pathways structure. Involving a team of handpicked coaches, he moved into outstation schools in a venture through which quality talent has been found among lesser schools. A number of players have found their way into the national schools coaching courses and earned national Under-19 colours.
His mentoring role over the last four years with the Under-19 squads for the ICC Youth World Cups has shown the path he has chosen to plough his knowledge back into the game and why all too many seem to forget his role since retirement has been one of a servant of the game, designed to help others. Even taking his pathways programme message to Jaffna.
While not quite the fallout expected from an Eyjafjallajokull style eruption, at least the effort to get rid of the bumbling quartet run by Ashantha de Mel, is a genuine act of transparency by the sports minister to get rid of a system clogged by obfuscation. The previous panel dithered over their 2011 World Cup strategy like blind men in a queue awaiting prescriptions for new spectacles along with clouding the issues with agendas and hiding behind flawed excuses.
It displayed a lack of professionalism and this became more evident when the newsprint media slammed them for their decision to leave out Jeevantha Kulatunga, player of the domestic T20 tournament from the initial squad of 30.
Doing an urgent volte-face, yet hiding their decision with flawed rhetoric that would have embarrassed even that ace political manipulator Machiavelli, SLC were asked to approach the International Cricket Council for the squad to be increased to 31 members. What excuse SLC made to the ICC for the request can only be imagined. The fabricated insouciance the selectors issued was how Kulatunga had been a sudden inclusion on the grounds that he was cover for an injured player.
This caused great hilarity in several pavilions around Colombo as the mafia had been caught in an iniquitous puddle of effluent of their making and the nauseating stench was wafting along Maitland Place, around Cinnamon Gardens and beyond. No apology offered to the batsman, just barefaced acquiescence of how someone such as Sanath Jayasuriya is to be allowed to continue with his career at the expense of others.
This last selection panel ignored the third year of the four-year cycle to build a squad for the World Cup and if anyone would care to look at the results of the tour of India, they do not make for good reading, even the success in the Bangladesh event where Sri Lanka beat India in the final. Suggestions were that they had become dinosaurs in their thinking and it showed in their policies and also why they needed to be removed before they could do more damage.
De Silva panel’s first job will be to select a squad for the Asia Cup to be held in Dambulla where conditions are dodgy at best for strokeplay. For this, they will be checking on the form being shown in Zimbabwe, who shocked India in the opening game of that series.
It is easy to criticise the captain, Suresh Raina, for his decisions of who to bowl what overs in the final 20 of that game and tough choices had to be made. What it did is expose the near mediocre quality of the three debutants that India selected for the opening game.
Ashok Dinda, Vinay Kumar and Umesh Yadav looked sadly out of place against the marauding batting tactics applied by Zimbabwe in the batting-friendly conditions at Queens Sport Club in Bulawayo. They retained them for the second game of the series against Sri Lanka, their form will be watched closely, more to see whether they have learnt from the drubbing by the Zimbabwe batsmen last Friday.
Sri Lanka went in with a predictable squad, but there is a time, hopefully soon that the new selection will make their choices regarding the batting order and around who the side revolves when it comes to batting order preferences. Just what the side didnneed, is for the run out of Upul Tharanga in the second over of the innings. This is where more discipline is needed and what the selectors will be looking for. This is players taking responsibility for their performances.
This will lead to questions of where Mahela Jayawardene fits in with the new thinking, what to do with Jayasuriya who is playing for Worcestershire in the T20 domestic series in England. Apart from his disastrous Indian Premier League form and that at the ICC World T20 tournament won by England in the West Indies, Jayasuriya’s last foreign engagement was with Natal Dolphins in the 2008/09 in a domestic 45 overs series where he managed a top score of 58, scoring 129 runs at 14.33 from nine games. He says he is sticking around until the World Cup, warning Sri Lanka’s selectors to drop him at their peril. This may now take a different course.
First indications of what De Silva’s panel is planning will be the Asia Cup series in Dambulla and their long-term planning of how they will help develop the players in the system.
Yet, there seems to be a hangover in selection policy from the old committee in the first game in Bulawayo. Instead of Tillakaratne Dilshan and the touring selection committee including Dinesh Chandimal in the side, they went for Dilshan in the dual role of captain and wicketkeeper. It is a risky policy at the best of times.
Chandimal is no AB de Villiers, but he has the ability to become a player similar to the evanescent South African, who made his first-class debut in the 2003/04 season for the Northerns Titans as an opening batsman who was also the team’s wicketkeeper. With South Africa already making their choices of who they want in their World Cup side, Sri Lanka are still in the starting stalls, and you can understand some of De Silva’s frustration how policy has created its own self-doubt among some players.
Certainly, Chamara Kapugedara is not in the De Villiers class. Yet, this is the opinion of one of the previous selection panel. For someone who began his ODI career four years ago amid trumpeting headlines, an average of 21.85 from 60 innings in 68 games with only six half centuries makes you wonder where is the magic. De Villiers fills the same role, he played his 100th ODI game on Friday, has a rate of seven centuries and 21 half-centuries, an average of 43.24 in 95 innings ehich explains the difference between the two. [Via]
Labels: ICC Cricket World Cup 2011
posted @ 2:07 PM,
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