Fix cricket administration before cricket

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

One of the most hotly debated issues in cricket circles today is the drop in the standards of the national cricket team across all three formats – Tests, ODIs and T20Is.

An interesting and revealing look at the standings of the first eight teams in ODI cricket for the past 15 years (2005-2020) reveals how the fortunes of the national team in this format has progressively declined. In 2005, Sri Lanka was ranked 2nd behind Australia, in 2010 they were 3rd, in 2015 they had dropped to 5th and in 2020 to 8th (see table below). The gradual decline is there for all to see; the stats don’t lie.

The immediate reaction when the team starts losing is to blame the cricketers, and then the coaches and selectors, but no one talks about the cricket administration. This is where the heart of the problem lies. The decline, not only in cricket but in all sports, is related to the environment. What you need to fix is the administration, not the cricket by bringing in people from overseas and paying them colossal sums of money.

The moment the right administrators come and sit, everything else will fall into place.

To begin with, they can start with the 2,000-page audit report by the Auditor General on Sri Lanka Cricket requested by former Sports Minister Harin Fernando in 2019, and a further audit report that came out the same year, which clearly reveals a catalogue of irregularities. Based on the report, the Minister said that SLC needed to answer five key points raised in the report, namely, lease agreement of the land to build the High Altitude Centre and Cricket University for local and international players, international television rights, national team, head coach appointments and local television rights.

The second report carried out on SLC can be accessed on: http://www.auditorgeneral.gov.lk/web/images/audit-reports/upload/2018/State_Corp_18/xx/Sri-Lanka-Cricket---E.pdf

Unfortunately, none of those queries were answered as the Government changed.

Even now it is not too late for the present Sports Minister to reopen the reports and recommence investigations. The Sports Minister has the support of the former Sports Minister, who defended him in Parliament when he came under fire over the national cricket team’s recent debacle in England. It is a good starting point for the legislators to clean up sport on a bipartisan agenda.

If the Government is genuinely interested in cleaning up sports and creating an enabling environment for the youth of today, they need to ensure that people with integrity, who will enjoy the trust and acceptance of the general public, occupy the all-important seats in the sports arena.

The ills of today’s cricket and every other sport is an environment where the administrators think that the sports are for their benefit. It is not so. The focal element of any sport has to be the sportsmen/women.

The people with the resources and the means are hijacking democracy through money, but if there is sincerity in cleaning the stable at Government level, they can still fix it.