Incursions and Excursions in and around Sri Lankan Cricket

BOOK EVENT at Premadasa Stadium in 2011 – courtesy of http://www.islandcricket.lk/columns/michael_roberts/155590201/incursions-and-excursions-in-and-around-sri-lankan-cricket

This presentation of my book Incursions and Excursions in and around Sri Lankan Cricket occurred at the R. Premadasa Stadium last year, during the World Cup 2011 squad’s practice session. It was deliberately timed before the quarter-finals of the World Cup because this author holds that the plaudits that should be extended to the cricketers remain valid, irrespective of the joys or sorrows attending the outcome of one game.

This gesture marks my appreciation of the achievements secured by the various Sri Lankan squads in recent years and, most significantly, the measured and calm manner in which they responded to the terrorist attack in Lahore on March 3, 2009, an event that is reviewed as Chapter VI in this book.

The book is available at Vijitha Yapa bookshops and at www.vijithayapa.com

                                                                                                                                                                     Pics by Eranga Jayawardena

 

Tamils protest at Lord’s over allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka

Andy Bull, in The Guardian, 5 June 2011

Around 2.45 pm a yellow weather balloon bobbed up above the Lord’s pavilion. It had “Boycott Sri Lanka” scrawled on the side in thick black ink, and a Tamil flag tied around the rope that tethered it to the ground. Cricket has often been portrayed as something that has helped hold Sri Lankan society together in the last 30 years. Only this week Kumar Sangakkara described it as the “heal-all of Sri Lanka’s social evils”. But this series is being played out to the sound of furious protests from London’s sizeable Tamil community, who are calling for the ECB to refuse to play against Sri Lanka until an independent investigation has been launched into allegations of war crimes committed by the government at the end of civil war in 2009. The UN estimates that 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed.

 ”The Tamil people hoped Muttiah Muralitharan, now retired from Test cricket, would support their cause.”is the Guardian’s imposed caption prompted by the demo-spokesman’s comments [see below] – Photo by Eranga Jayawardena

The idea that the national team rises above the rifts that run so deep in Sri Lankan society looks a little less convincing since Muttiah Muralitharan has retired. Murali was one of the few Tamils in the team, along with Angelo Mathews, who is currently injured. “We hoped Murali would say something to support the Tamil people but he ended up supporting President Rajapaksa,” said Tamil spokesman Thusiyan Nandakumar. “At the time when the Tamil people were down and out, many people looked up to Murali to say something. And those people were disappointed when he did not. He was the only Tamil face out there who was recognised worldwide, but he has not even joined us in asking for an independent investigation.” Several English politicians have, including David Cameron.

Sa’adi Thawfeeq reviews two books on Lankan cricket

Courtesy of The Nation , 17 April 2011

Incursions & Excursions In And Around Sri Lankan Cricket
By Michael Roberts
Published by Vijitha Yapa Publications
Price: Rs. 1,500/-
Mariamma, groundswoman extraordinary- Oval, Colombo

Sathasivam & Bradman toss, 1948

 Moment of triumph, 17 March 1996, Lahore –Pic from Crosscurrents

Michael Roberts has painstakingly done a lot of research in putting together his latest book Incursions & Excursions in and around Sri Lankan Cricket. The book brings to light a wide variety of subjects like the politics that affect Sri Lanka Cricket administration, the ethnicity involving clubs and national teams, the LTTE’s attempts to promote their cause through cricket, the Muralitharan controversy saga and its repercussions and the terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team at Lahore. All these chapters have been widely researched by Roberts who has the knack of gathering information by talking to people concerned and storing it in a computer like mind to put it later into print form either by articles which he sends widely to various newspapers or present it in a book like the one under review. The outstanding feature of the book is the photos section where Roberts has managed to lay his hands on some rare and unpublished photos of Sri Lanka cricket (there are over 100 colour and black and white photos). The book has been written in his own inimitable style. The one flaw in the publication is in the photos section titled Great Moments & Significant Facet (34) where it features pictures of a Sidath Wettimuny cover drive, a young Arjuna Ranatunga returning to the pavilion after a fighting knock against Australia in 1983 and another picture of Ranatunga acknowledging the cheers after his final innings for his country. All three pictures have the identical caption of ‘Sidath Wettimuny drives’. If not for this rare lapse it is another fine Roberts’s masterpiece. – [ST]

From Rags To Riches
By Rex Clementine
Published by Godage International Publishers (Pvt) Ltd
Price: Rs 800/-

Sri Lankan cricket tour of England under fire

Shamindra Ferdinando, from the Island, 2 May 2011

The UK-based LTTE rump is planning to disrupt the Sri Lankan cricket team’s forthcoming tour of England, The Island learns. A senior government official told ‘The Island’ that the LTTE activists had organised a series of protests, targeting the Sri Lankan team and in a bid to pressure the England Cricket Board to call off the tour. Responding to a query, the official said that it would be the responsibility of the UK authorities to ensure the safety and security of the visiting cricket team.

 Tamils protest at Kennington Oval, 11 June 1975 — for the text of their broadsheet and a review of this moment,see ‘Cricket as Protest Arena,” in Roberts, Incusions and excursions in and around Sri Lankan Cricket, Colombo, 2011, distributedvia www.vijthayapa.com

The official said that the organisers had launched a campaign to bring a large group of Eelam activists on May 14 morning to the Oxbridge Cricket Ground, where Tillekeratne Dilshan’s team would be playing their first match. According to him, the protesters would try to disrupt the match, unless the British took tangible action to keep them at bay. The first Test match begins on May 26 at Sophia Gardens Cardiff. The tour includes three Tests, one T- 20 international and five ODIs. According to a widely circulated message among the eelamists, the LTTE rump says the UK cut all bilateral relations with Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe in 2008 due to large scale human rights violations in that country. South Africa, too, had been subject to ‘sports sanctions’ not only by the British, but FIFA and IOC as well, the eelamists say, urging the British to slap sanctions on Sri Lanka.

The LTTE rump has declared that a team which represented “war criminals and a genocidal state,” should not be welcomed in the UK. UK-based Ram Sivalingham, Deputy Prime Minister of the so-called Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) called for a meet at Scarborough Civic Centre, conference Room B, on May Day, to discuss ways and means of pressuring the UNSG to appoint an independent international war crimes investigation in spite of strong protests by the GoSL. Sources said that

Incursions … around Sri Lankan Cricket

Michael Roberts

Incursions and Excursions in and around Sri Lankan Cricket is a new book that runs to 176 pages plus 32 pages of photographs that are not paginated, but numbered, in a cluster in the middle. The book is available at Vijitha Yapa Publications who also have a credit card system which runs efficiently – www.vijithayapa.com.

                                                                                                      

 

 

 

 

 

 Pic courtesy of Herald & Weekly Times     

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.          Introduction                                                                                                   

II.        Landmarks and Threads in Sri Lankan Cricket           

III.    Wunderkidz in a Blunderland: Tensions & Tales from Sri Lankan Cricket                                

 IV.     Cricket as Protest Arena: Tamil Incursions                     

V.      Saving Murali: Action Onfield and Off-field, 1995-2005                     

VI.    Cricket under Siege: The Lahore Attack, 3 March 2009           

           Amalgamated Bibliography       

 

Two anxious moments, one solid innings: Wettimuny at Lord’s, 23 August 1984

Michael Roberts

After Sri Lanka had been asked to bat first by David Gower in conditions that were expected to favour bowlers during their first Test Match abroad at Lord’s on 23 August 1984, Sidath Wettimuny was extremely nervous as he took guard.[1] Only those few cricketers who have gone through such an experience at a big match in front of a large crowd could really comprehend the tension coursing through his body at this moment.

  Pic by Getty Images

 Then, another shaft of anxiety penetrated Sidath’s being  as a crowd of some 20-30 young Sri Lankan Tamil men stormed onto the cricket field yelling and shouting. Anticipating the possibility of an attack,[2] he made a tactical move and withdrew to the cluster of English slip fielders.  The Englishmen asked him what was transpiring. No explanation was called for: by then, the Tamil demonstrators lay on the turf pitch with their placards voicing their grievances. It was clearly a protest against the political conditions facing Tamils living in Sri Lanka and an activity sponsored by one or other of the militant organisations in operation at this point of time; or even perhaps a combined operation.

    Unfortunately, Sidath Wettimuny cannot recall the details imprinted on placard or presented as shout. Logically, however, one can conjecture[3] that the pogrom that had been directed by both state functionaries and popular action against Tamils living in the south-western and central districts of the island[4] in late July 1983 was featured in the grievances expressed; and that the liberation struggle for Thamilīlam (Eelam in short) was a prominent emphasis.[5] I stress here that Sri Lanka had become an international pariah[6] after the pogrom of July 1983 coming as the latter did on top of a referendum that extended the term of J. R. Jayewardene’s government by plebiscitarian vote.

Two Abstracts summarizing two essays on Sri Lanka’s cricket history, 2007 & 2009

Michael Roberts

 Squad that beat India in Ahmedabad early 1965

 These abstracts will give readers some sense of the content so that those wishing to pursue the topic can seek out the original print source. Not that (1) the articles were finalized about 18-24 months before appearing in print, that being the normal time for review processes and printing and (2) there is some overlap between the two articles.

They mesh with the Item on Sangakkara’s interview with Al-Jazeera one week after the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket entourage at Lahore on 3 March 2009 in http://thuppahi.wordpress.com [where there are anumber of interesting photographs]. They are presented here in part because they anticipate the publication of the following article in toto within http://thuppahi.wordpress.com: “Cricketing Fervour and Islamic Fervour: Marginalisation in the Diaspora”, The International Journal of the History of Sport, June-Sept. 2004, 3 & 4: 550-63.

Michael Roberts, “Landmarks and threads in the cricketing universe of Sri Lanka,” Sport in Society, 2007, 10: 120-42.

ABSTRACT:  This article analyses the political contexts impinging upon cricket as well as the politics within the cricketing universe. Organized along temporal as well as thematic lines, it beginswith the story of cricket as a pastime for the ruling British elements and marks the importance of total institutions such as military regiments and schools in its emergence in the nineteenth century. The principal engine of expansion, however, was the institutioncalled the ‘club’. For over 100 years cricket was also an urban phenomenon, though the planting clubs were a site for its expressions of mannered masculinity. A paradox emerges: cricket was both an agency of Westernization and a site for challenges to white, British notions of superiority.As a largely elitist sport confined to the Ceylonese ‘middle class’, it was one of the earliest vehicles of Ceylonese nationalism. This sentiment marked indigenous sentiment without nullifying the ethnic distinctions of clubs centred on Sinhalese, Burghers,Tamil and so on. Thus in the post-independence era the Sri Lankan Tamils were among those who supported the Ceylonese team when they faced the Tamils of southern India in the regular encounter for the Gopalan Trophy (1953–76). Many forces promoted thepopularity of the game among the urban middle classes, not least the popularity of the Ashes and tours by visiting foreign teams in the twentieth century. But until the 1960s/1970s cricket at the highest level was not only elitist, but also dominated by (a) specific elite schools with cultural capital and a powerful cricketing heritage and (b) by the metropolis of Colombo. However, the flow-on from a populist political revolution via the ballot in 1956, which saw the emergence of linguistic nationalism associated with the Sinhala language, eventually penetrated the fields of cricket. Good cricketers from ‘Buddhist schools’ and/or outstation schools began to secure places in the top eleven and eventually, by the 1980s,commanded the scene. This development was one thread in the democratization and popularization of the game, a process assisted by commentaries in the vernacular from thelate 1960s as well as the impact of colour television from 1981 onwards.

 

 Sanath and Roshan hug after record stand at Premadasa Stadium

 

  

An Aussie redneck rails at Sri Lankan fans at the MCG …. and receives sharp ripostes from other dinkum Aussies

This letter to the Editor appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, 5 November uder a ttile that was presumably imposed by the editors

  Cricket match is a test of loyalties

The fruits of multiculturalism were again on display at the MCG on Wednesday night. Most of the crowd consisted of people cheering wildly for an Australian defeat, and I venture to suggest virtually all of them were long-term Australian residents, many probably citizens, who have made this country their home.

Obviously, while they have been happy to accept our hospitality, and in many cases purport to have joined the Australian family, their emotional, cultural, civic and sporting loyalty lies elsewhere. Among them were many children, most of whom would have been born in Australia. These Australian-born citizens will grow up feeling loyalty to a country many of them will not even have visited, while believing they owe little or no allegiance to their country of birth.

Sri Lanka Cricket reaches out to the North

Michael Roberts, 27 June 2010

Cricket grounds, St. John’s College, U19 trial match for SLC

D. S. de Silva entered the administration of Sri Lanka Cricket several years back at President Rajapakse’s behest, being tasked with the extension and improvement of school cricket throughout the island. From personal knowledge I can assert that this was a role he pursued assiduously. An Excel chart (collected by me in May 2010 from SLC admin) showing the distribution of cricket kits and provision of side-nets and various types of wickets to schools in the period 2009-early 2010 confirms that SLC has reached far and wide.

Tamil Protest at Kennington Oval, London, 7 June 1975

Michael Roberts, late March 2010 [posted earlier but disappeared -- now partially inserted, one more photo to follow. Again the machines have disorted the footnote citations so that has to be sorted out]

On 7 June 1975 as the Sri Lankan cricketers, minnows in the universe of cricket, took on the mighty Australians under Ian Chappel at the Kensington Oval in London in the early rounds of the first-ever World Cup in limited-overs competition, a small band of young Sri Lankan Tamil men invaded the centre-field and displayed placards as they lay down in protest.

    Sporting encounters that attract large crowds have occasionally been utilised for symbolic political statements. One of the most striking moments was when the American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos mounted the podium to receive their medals for the 200 metres at the Mexico Olympics in 1968 wearing one black glove, black socks and no shoes as the American anthem was played and then proceeded to give the Black Power salute. This graphic statement “was designed to highlight the oppression of black people [in USA] over the years and was headline news throughout the world.”[i]

Though intrusive, such actions are peaceful political expressions which differ from explosive assaults that have claimed the lives of athletes or bystanders. The occasion when Palestinian militants from the Black September group held Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympics in early September 1972, resulting in the death of 11 athletes, one German policemen and 5 assailants during a series of fights, is perhaps the best known incident of the latter type. More recently, as we know, on 3rd March 2009 a body of Islamic militants attacked the convoy bearing Sri Lankan cricketers and ICC officials to the stadium at Lahore. [ii]