Has SSC lost its cricketing identity?

When SSC celebrated their 125th anniversary last year

SSC clubhouse at Maitland Place

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

The Singhalese Sports Club (SSC) is exclusively a cricket club that has a long and rich heritage of producing several Sri Lankan cricketers and captains of the highest calibre and a club that has won the most number of trophies in domestic cricket.

It was the cricket that ran the club and the venue became a major international cricket ground where Test Matches were played. It also came to be known as akin to the Lord’s Cricket Ground in London because it housed the headquarters of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC).

SSC won the inaugural Division I inter-club tournament conducted by SLC (then known as Ceylon Cricket Association) and played for the Daily News Trophy from 1938 to 1949/50 outright on no less than eight occasions. Kalutara Town Club, Saracens SC and Tamil Union were the other clubs to win the trophy in that period. When Division I was played for the P. Saravanamuttu Trophy between 1950-51 and 1981-82, and from 1991-92 to 1997-98, SSC won it 13 times, when Division I was competed for the Lakspray Trophy between 1982-83 and 1990-91 on four occasions and when it was competed for the Premier Trophy from 1998-99 to 2021-22 on four occasions. Overall they have won the premier club title on 29 occasions let alone sharing it on four instances. This is besides the other trophies they won in limited-overs cricket.

The contribution the club has made to Sri Lanka cricket is countless. SSC has produced players and captains in the calibre of Sargo Jayawickrama, F. C. de Saram, C. I. Gunasekara, Ben Navaratne, L. D. S. Gunasekara, D. S. Jayasundara, M. O. Gooneratne, Bertie Wijesinghe, Gamini Goonesena, Mahes Rodrigo, P. I. Peiris, Neil Chanmugam, Anuruddha Polonowita, Anura Tennekoon in the pre-Test era, Duleep Mendis, the Wettimuny brothers – Sunil, Mithra and Sidath, the Ranatunga brothers – Dhammika, Arjuna and Sanjeeva, Asanka Gurusinha, Marvan Atapatthu, Mahela Jayawardene, Dimuth Karunaratne, Dasun Shanaka and Charith Asalanka of the post-Test era to name a few.   

But in recent years there is a school of thought that SSC has gradually lost its cricketing identity and allowed other sports to take the upper hand in the club so that today they find themselves demoted to play in a lower division in cricket. It is something which is unthinkable for a club like SSC who only last year celebrated their 125th anniversary. This does not augur well for Sri Lanka’s premier first-class cricket tournament that SSC is not in the league.

Where SSC really lost its grip on cricket was after the passing away of one of their cricketing stalwarts Michael de Zoysa. He was not only the livewire of the club but its heart and soul in cricket. Had the late Michael been alive one cannot imagine SSC would have suffered the ignominy of being relegated to a lower division.

While the absence of a club like SSC is going to have a big impact on the level of cricket that will be played at Major Club 3-Day Tournaments in the future, the club itself is also partly to blame for the plight they have fallen into.

Appointing a former fielding coach who is also a specialised throw down coach as the head coach of the team was one of them. He didn’t measure upto the standards of past SSC coaches and it had a major impact on the strategies adopted and selection of players in the team especially when the national cricketers were absent.

Another aspect was knowing the Major Club 3-Day matches were on, why SSC gave permission to some of their key cricketers like the club captain Charith Asalanka, and national cricketers Dasun Shanaka and Avishka Fernando to go and take part in an international T10 tournament in Dubai.

As a result of it, Shanaka, a former national captain did a Bandula Warnapura sort of turnaround and left for Dubai in the middle of a game while playing for SSC faking injury to go and play in a match of the T10 tournament on the same day.

The late Warnapura is notorious for walking out in the middle of a Mercantile ‘A’ Division match to travel on the sly to South Africa to go on a rebel tour with a Sri Lanka Arosa team in 1982. Warnapura is no more. Although we say this we do not take away his achievements as a Sri Lankan cricketer and captain. 

This action by Shanaka resulted in SLC imposing a fine of $ 10,000 on him. But what action did SSC take? None. They should have been the first to take action and suspend Shanaka, but instead, they allowed him to return and play in their final game against NCC.

Cricketers love to join a club like the SSC because of the extensive facilities that are available for them to improve their cricket. At the same time it is a well-known fact that SSC has a tendency to sign up and coming cricketers from other clubs giving hope that they would be selected in the national team. This has been a practice they have been carrying on for years and it has finally caught up with them because they lost nine of their cricketers to the national team during Australia’s recent tour of the country, which greatly weakened their side and resulted in their poor performances. But this is no excuse for in the recent past other clubs have also lost national players, but not performed so bad as SSC. The cricket management has to ensure a level playing field and that the club remains in the tournament.

Suffice it to say, being joint champions the previous year, being ousted from the Major Club 3-Day tournament does not bode well for the cricket management of the club. Someone has to be answerable for SSC’s poor state of affairs.