There were six tosses of the coin during the recent series against India and there were five Sri Lankan captains. This I feel is a world record. No wonder Sri Lankan higher-ups are scraping the barrel for captains. Upul Tharanga has twice been penalised for slow over rates, will he ever learn, Dinesh Chandimal is plagued with injuries and Chamara Kapugedara is the latest casualty. Are they dreading the captaincy! It is too much of a coincidence.
Have you ever heard of a captain fighting for his place? When I reminisce back to school cricket, a captain was selected for the whole season and when I captained my school, there was no big brother looking over my shoulder with an axe to grind, so my mental tuning was spot on. International cricket and school cricket could be poles apart but the basics are the same.
Angelo Mathews like Mike Dennis of England a few years back both gave up the captaincy before they were sacked and both were gentlemen cricketers. Mike Brearley was brought in by the English selectors to replace Ian Botham as the England captain and this was a rare occasion. Although Botham was a brilliant cricketer as a captain he could not produce the goods, Brearley was an astute captain and he was a psychoanalyst who was educated and cultured, who never went hell for leather to get the best from his team. On the other side of the coin there are captains who are born leaders, take for example, Ian Chapell, Ted Dexter, the late Sir Frank Worrell, Arjuna Ranatunga, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev and on a lower bracket the present Indian captain Virat Kohli who looks very promising.
A captain like Arjuna Ranatunga we might never get, he had qualities of Ian Chappell and Mike Brearley put together. That’s how we were able to galvanise a team of world beaters.
It is pathetic to note; our cricket has hit rock bottom. I take my hat off for the selectors for stepping down after this disastrous series with India. Please note that this Indian team are no. 1 in the world and everything they touch turn to gold. The Indian cricket set up is well organised and ably led from their top man down to Virat Kohli. They have established a pool of players, who are talented, brimming with confidence and focussed.
In the Sri Lankan pool they have talented players no doubt, but the confidence in them and focus is not there. As a result, team spirit is down in the doldrums.The crowds will start deserting the stadiums, like what happened at the R.Premadasa Stadium last time around.
International cricket has become a mind game and to captain an International cricket team and to succeed you need to handle pressure at the highest level. As a result most famous cricket captains have given up their mantle of captaincy eg, A.B. de Villiers, Alastair Cook and Angelo Mathews. All three of them are doing well since.
I feel that there is an out of the box solution to lift our cricket, and to raise it to a much higher level. We have to bring a person like Mike Brearley, but he should be a home grown guy who could communicate well in Sinhala. His qualifications should be as follows: a cricket enthusiast, preferably retired so that he could give 100% of his time, qualified or experienced in sports psychology, well versed with the local culture, and down to earth.
Communication plays a very big part in our daily lives as well, that’s why the person should be able to communicate effectively and the medium should be Sinhala. Almost all our cricketers are not fluent in English and find it difficult to understand English. The Indian cricketers can understand English much better and they can communicate effectively.
The person has to be a cricket enthusiast and patriotic as well. I suggest a retired person because he can devote himself much better. He will have to gel the team together without interfering much with the technical aspects of the game.
We have uncut gems in the team such as Kusal Mendis, Akila Dananjaya, Niroshan Dickwella, Dhananjaya de Silva, Lakshan Sandakan, Dushmantha Chameera, Wanindu Hasaranga, Dilshan Munaweera, Dhanushka Gunathilaka etc these players will benefit most from this man concerned. Except for the first three mentioned all the others need some psychoanalysis since they are young and fighting for their places.
In my book Dinesh Chandimal for Tests and Chamara Kapugedera for the shorter versions are the best bets for captaincy.
I fervently hope the men up above will look for a psychoanalyst sooner than later.
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