By Dr Kamal Wickremasinghe
The expression Relative Pitch used in the caption of this essay is a concept that originates from the field of music, which describes the crucialability of singers and players of instruments in an ensemble to re-create a given musical note by comparing it to a reference note. The phrase ‘relative pitch’ has come to be used as an allegory for ‘harmony of ability and intent’ in other group endeavours. A look at the current state of Sri Lankan cricket draws the allegory of relative pitch from the deep recesses of reminiscence as the likely missing ingredient responsible for the sad state of affairs.
To put current woes in perspective, 21years after the maiden World Cup triumph, Sri Lankan cricket has descended to the ‘bottom of the pit’ of international competition. The Sri Lankan cricket team has become the whipping boys of international cricket. In the last twelve months in Test match cricket Sri Lanka lost 3-0 to South Africa, were routed3-0 at home by India, and suffered their first ever defeat to Bangladesh. They also lost to Zimbabwe in the ODI series at home and only narrowly escaped losing the solitary Test against them. The miserable run of losses was temporarily halted by two series wins against Pakistan in the UAE and ODIs against India respectively, possibly ‘thrown’ by them due to long odds in this age of betting. While the calendar year 2017 marked the nadir of Sri Lanka’s cricketing performance since gaining Test status, it certainly has long been coming.
In short, Sri Lankan cricket is in a pretty pickle.
To state the obvious, every cricketing contest should necessarily result in a winning and a losing team and it goes without saying that ecstasy of victory as well as the agony of defeat— under normal conditions — needs to be managed with equanimity. The issue currently is that SL as a professional cricket team seems to have got used to the ‘habit of losing’ as the legendary American football coach Vince Lombardire marked about the losing Green Bay Packers whom he changed to a winning team in the 1960s.Transitioning from ingrained loser mentality to a winning frame of mind demands rational analysis of causes and action founded on lessons learnt.
The remediation process needs to start by viewing cricket in its proper context as a pursuit that reflects life; Cricket enthusiasts swear that Test cricket imitates life by mirroring the effect of circumstances beyond one’s control — in the form of pitch conditions, weather, and umpiring decisions etc. — can make ‘the best laid plans of mice and men’ go awry. Also, cricket exemplifies the need for patience and fortitude to bear with vagaries, pending opportunities to recourse through ‘second chances’ such as a second innings or a new ball.The reverse process of the broader society influencing cricket is equally important, as has been brilliantly exposed by the Trinidadian ex-cricketer and writer C.L.R.James(1901–89) (CLR) in his memoir ‘BeyondaBoundary’.
The title of CLR’s book, ‘Beyond a Boundary’ (1963) is, in fact, a metaphor for the transfer of focus on individual performance and group effort the black people in the West Indies developed through participation in cricket, to the political struggle against colonialism. Using language that cuts like glass, CLR examines race, class, colonialism, and culture in the West Indies through the prism of his experience as a player in cricket clubs in his native Trinidad, stratified by race and class,to show thatdiscourse on cricket cannot be cocooned from other aspects of life:The central message to the reader is to reject the fragmenting of reality that prevents one from knowing anything fully, including his/her own reality. CLR’s book has been widely acknowledged as one of the greatest socio-cultural analyses of any sport. Reviewing it in the centenary edition of the Wisden Cricketer’s Almanac (1963), the incomparable BBC cricket commentator John Arlott (1914-1991) described the book as ‘the finest book written about the game of cricket’. The plethora of cricket books written since has done nothing to distract from the accolade.
As per the moral in ‘Beyond a Boundary’, the origins of current ills of Sri Lankan cricket can be traced back, in part, to the general economic, political and cultural chaos that exists in the country. Solutions are unlikely to be found without stemming the influence of the prevailing culture of corruption, political interference and administrative bungling plaguing cricket in the same manner they are affecting the broader society of which cricket is a microcosm.
Sri Lanka not alone
In dealing with the crisis, it is important to recognise that periodic rises and falls of cricketing fortunes have been a feature in all cricket-playing countries, as common as the ups and downs of fortunes of a team in a five-day Test match.
England went through a period of sharp decline in the mid-‘80s and many times since then. India were not exactly booming in the mid-‘80s either. West Indies, having never lost a Test series for 15 years from 1980, started losing in the mid ‘90s. Their cricketing stocks are so low currently; they have been forced to play the qualifiers for the 2019 World Cup. Things were the same with Australia. Having been at a low-ebb in the mid-‘80s, and recovering to win three successive World Cups (1999–2007) and two runs of 16 consecutive Test victories, Australian cricket faced danger of collapsing in the late ‘90s. In late 2017, concern over the state of Australian crickethas resurfaced, despite their occasional strong performances against mediocre teams.
The periodic downturns of cricketing fortunes are routinely attributed by administrators to the loss of one or several key players through retirement and personal reasons. It is certainly true that sudden decline of teams is caused most often by the retirement of several key players around the same time. As an example, the slide of the West Indies was triggered by the retirement of true world-beating ‘stars’ of the calibre of Andy Roberts, Clive Lloyd, Vivian Richards, Joel Garner, Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes and Jeff Dujon within the space of two to three years.
But, the key factor causing the decline was in fact, the below par quality of the replacement players: cricket administrations regularly get caught out by the transition time lag between the retirement of key players and the blooding of new players to replace them. The mighty West Indies became complacent with beating all-comers over two decades, but their administration lost sight of the grassroots and overlooked the importance of bringing the next generation through.
Sri Lanka showed a comparable neglect of the fundamentals after achieving the mission in 1996 through clever strategy and able captaincy. In the more recent past, only the void created bytwo or three ‘greats’and the ineffectiveness of their replacements raised alarm. After a serious of sacked coaches, failed captains, and a list of defeats as long as your arm, Sri Lanka needs to stop thumb twiddling and get serious with reform;
A strategic vision for the future
The public pronouncements of national concern about the current predicament of Sri Lankan cricket, so far, has been limited to an invitation from the minister of sports to former administrators, players, sports experts and journalists to brainstorm ideas about how to revive the game, as part of an administrative overhaul he plans to launch. The first observation on the minister’s plan is that an administrative overhaul would only be one necessary component of reform. The pitfall of considering it as panacea for all ills need to be avoided; nothing short of a more comprehensive stock-take of all systems is likely to yield the desired outcome of restoring the health of Sri Lankan cricket.
Critiquing the sports minister’s early opinion further, he appears to have missed the vital link between the standard of domestic cricket and the capacity of the team to perform at international level. Future plans to develop a strong team could only be achieved through a tough domestic competition that would ‘test’ technical skills of players.
The current decline of Sri Lankan cricket at international level can directly be attributed to the pitiable standards of the game domestically, opening up a yawning gap between the rigorous technical and psychological demands of the international game and the quality of players produced by the local infrastructure.
The system founded on a strongly competitive domestic competition needs to be backed up by systems capable of nurturing talented players through coaching and technological help aimed at rectifying any technical deficiencies. Attendant educational programmes on aspects such as team dynamics, maintaining high levels of concentration over long periods of time and psychological aspects of pressure by the opponents need to be provided. The ultimate test for team selection at the highest level needs to be based on consistent good performance in a high quality domestic tournament alone. After all, cricketers, like the aristocracy, live by numbers as the saying goes.
In reinforcing the case for a strong domestic competition, it needs to be pointed out that all the cases of cricket decline in England, the West Indies, and Australia cited above were instances of cricket administrations getting caught out by the transition time lag between the retirement of key players and the blooding of new players to replace them; The mighty West Indies got complacent with beating all-comers and lost sight of the grassroots and the importance of bringing the next generation through. Such has been the result of periods of success in other countries.
The worst consequence of such neglect is the pressure on team selectors to rush players who have failed to earn their stripes due to inferior ability in to the national fold. Sri Lanka has recently faced the same fate. Maintaining a state of preparedness by way of a dynamic succession plan capable of providing players of similar quality to replace those retiring, or lost due to other reasons, would be the only means of managing the situation.
The process of succession planning in cricket is no different to the long-practiced management practice in business corporations where succession plans — aimed at addressing generational change required for continued performance at optimum levels— are routine part of corporate planning. Success at the top of sport demands reserve strength at the bench similar to managerial reserves in private enterprise, and an ongoing player production line is vital to meet the challenge.
The problem of the low standard of the current first class tournament and corruption in cricket administration are linked. A first-class cricket competition with the participation of 24 teams of clearly unequal player strength and other necessary skills is clearly not sustainable. Even the 14 teams that comprised the tournament last year were too many. A look at the reasoning behind this damaging expansion of the competition show the ugly reality of ‘too much democracy’ —just as in broader politics in Sri Lanka — blighting cricket in the country.The problem lies in the cynical use of the top level domestic competition as a means of enabling clubs to secure more money from SLC as inducements. Talking about solving problems of Sri Lankan cricket without addressing this issue would be a sheer waste of time.
A tiered inter provincial four-day first class tournament restricted to four or five teams at the pinnacle (as previously existed) needs to be reinstituted by showing reason to SLC member clubs who objected to the idea previously on selfish grounds. The administrators’ duty is not to encourage such selfish behaviour but to work in the interest of the game.
Whatever strengths the Sri Lankan player pool currently possesses have come from a strong school-based coaching system. The clubs, with the obvious exception of leading Colombo clubs, have been living on the riches of this talent pool, doing precious little to develop players up the system. Though the days of school coaches of the calibre of F.C. de Saram, Ubhaya de Silva, Lassie Abeywardena, Gerry Gunaratne, Stanley Jayasinghe, Anuruddha Polonnowita are long gone, thankfully the school systems appears to be still churning out young cricketers with ‘potential’ to be world beaters. Realising that potential at international level requires careful nurturing of talent and ‘acclimatising’ players to the rigours of the modern game through proper structures and domestic competitions of high standard. Sri Lankan cricket currently fails by not providing a strong enough domestic competition to blood new players through.
The minister’s perceived need to overhaul administration needs to start with a careful look at his own Intimate involvement — in official capacity — in team matters: actions such as the sports minister making disparaging commentsaboutlack of fitness among players, and recalling a team set to board a planeon an overseas tour do not exactly show signs of professionalism expected from the highest level of administration. The involvement of the sports ministry in matters such as team selections, player performance management etc. are practices suited to ‘banana republics’ than to modern Sri Lanka.The sports ministry and the minister should dissociate themselves from the day to dayrunning of cricket, leaving the administrators to run the show, and hold them accountable.Maintaining a system that enables individuals with close links to the gaming business at the helm, in addition to providing bad optics, is a recipe for disaster in terms of corrupting the game through the Twenty20 route.
The process of building a new team around a core of well-raised young men with a passion for the game and a sense of service needs to start without delay. Focus at all levels need to be on developing a culture that values high standards, strong discipline, and advanced levels of skill. A tough first division competition aimed at producing a team capable of playing attacking cricket on the field against the best the world could offer would be the foundation urgently needed.
It needs to be recognised however, like in music, no amount of coaching or technical intervention could convert a player with limited natural ability to a level of competence required at international level; the technical means should be used discreetly to observe and correct specific issues with technique of players who display the necessary natural attributes. It needs to be remembered that cricket administrations do not have to ‘find’ supremely talented players, but provide a path clear enough for such players to find them. After all, Muttiah Muralitharan, Chaminda Vaas and the others of the 1996 team were not ‘finds’ as much as they were ‘products’ of that success.
The process of development also needs to be built on an ongoing process of communication to players as to where they stand in the hierarchy, with frank advice and transfer of those who are not realistically likely to make it to the highest level to their appropriate ranks.
Such initiatives need to face the challenge posed by the modern Twenty20 franchise-based cricket that has spawned a generation of cricketers with divided loyalties, lured by the lucre. Sri Lanka Cricket also needs to stay away from unsustainable pay deals based on the Australian model,promising a share of assumed future ‘revenue’ it has yet to secure. In addition to deviating from the usual business convention of committing an expense to free cash flow rather than to a revenue base, it would breed a culture of greed.
In conclusion, it is unwise to discount the possibilities of a restoration of past glory in the face of hard times. Provided astrongunderlying culture free of corruption is developed, commitment retained and the basics are respected, the bad patch will sooner or later end. Setbacks should be regarded not as calamities but challenges, extracting lessons from them.
Courtesy:The Island