Slinger Malinga takes to the streets of Colombo

Media restrictions and security measures surround the SL cricket team

Michael Roberts

Over the past decade the security screen and watchful eye surrounding cricketers and cricket officials have increased substantially. There are good reasons. With betting, spot-fixing and instances of corrupt cricketers been seduced into the betting game, the ICC keeps a weather eye on communications and, as far as I know, bans the use of mobile phones by players during matches. Again, in certain lands armed guards oversee the cricketers’ environment — with the attack on the Sri Lankan team and its official entourage in Lahore serving as the principal reason for this increase of concern.

I discovered the bureaucratic lengths to which the ICC and its local agencies proceed in this regard when the Test Match between Australia and India was played in Adelaide recently.  Kumar Dharmasena was umpiring and when I was at the match one day I went to the front-desk at the office of the South Australian Cricket Association (SACA) to ascertain which hotel he was staying in because Kumar is an acquaintance and I thought it would be good to indulge in some hospitality. The front desk was not permitted to divulge such information and gave me a number for a liaison officer to pursue further inquiries. That officer never answered his phone, so I gave up. Sachchitra Senanayake being escorted to pavilion

Sri Lanka milks Australia

4,500 cows imported from Australia

…… Headline in The Island 10 September 2011

Savouring Mahela Jayawardene — “a class act”

Steve James, from the Telegraph, 22 May 2011

 Pic courtesy of Getty 

Aesthetes, take your seats. Beauty is on its way. Amid the muscular beasts that roam cricket’s Twenty20-filled landscape these days, there is still room for style, and batsmen do not come any more stylish than Sri Lanka’s Mahela Jayawardene. Is there a more elegant right-hander in the game right now?  I would venture not. He really should have been a left-hander. Sachin Tendulkar will doubtless have his supporters, but are his strokes really quite as languid as Jayawardene’s? Tendulkar’s team-mate, VVS Laxman, might actually be easier on the eye. Warwickshire had two rather graceful batsmen in their ranks last week — the homegrown Ian Bell and their overseas import, Mohammad Yousuf. Michael Clarke has his moments, as once did his compatriot Mark Waugh. It is, of course, all subjective fun.

But I have been smitten by Jayawardene’s strokeplay ever since first setting eyes upon it in the town of Kurunegala, in central Sri Lanka, where he made a sublime century for Sri Lanka A against England A in 1998. The effects of the furnace-like heat, exacerbated by the huge rock that overlooks the ground, as well as the presence on the outfield of a huge brown snake that frightened the life out of fast bowler Jimmy Ormond as he ran around the boundary, were eased by the class of Jayawardene’s batting

Incursions and Excursions in and around Sri Lankan Cricket — A Presentation

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.

In a symbolic gesture of a token character Michael Roberts presents a copy of Incursions and Excursions in and around Sri Lankan Cricket to the Sri Lankan cricket team through Anura Tennekoon, the Manager at present. This gesture marks the author’s 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 3^rd March 2009, an event that is reviewed as Chapter VI in this book.

 first two Pics by Eranga Jayawardena

This presentation occurred at the Premadasa Stadium during the World Cup squad’s practice session. It was deliberately timed BEFORE the quarter-finals of the 2011 World Cup because the 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.

Revisiting the Lahore Attack of 3 March 2009, I and II

See BBC report of early March and “What I am feeling most is disbelief,” by trevor Bayliss for ESPN cricinfo reproduced in http://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/revisiting-the-lahore-attack-ii-what-im-feeling-most-is-disbelief-trevor-bayliss/ ….. etc etc . Also see Chapter VI in Michael Roberts, Intrusions and Excursions in and around Sri Lankan Cricket, Colombo, 2011, publd by author, ISBN 978-955-53198-0-5 which is available through www.vijithayapa.com OR www.srilankanbooks.com

 

 As we look forard to the World Cup final of 2011, readers will not miss the irony arising from the banner that speaks of Celebrating Cricket” ….

…..

Pics are from http://pakistankakhudahafiz.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/lahore-attack-photos/

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

 

  

Sangakkara interviewed by Al-Jazeera on new captain’s role & Lahore attack, 12 March 2009

Paul Rhys for Al-Jazeera, 12 March 2009

Jayawardene was captain till March 2009 and Sangakkara took over as scheduled that month. But this interview, which I discovered recently, is of great significance not only for cricket reasons, but because of the information provided on the Sri Lankan players’ reactions to the assault on the cricket entourage near Gaddafi Stadium at Lahore on 3 March 2009. Ironically this Stadium was the scene of Sri Lanka’s greatest ineternational triumph in cricket on 17 March 1996. Chaminda Vaas was the only one to particpate in both events.  Michael Roberts

Kumar Sangakkara’s appointment as Sri Lanka cricket captain in place of Mahela Jayawardene comes just nine days after the team escaped from an ambush by heavily-armed killers on their way to a Test match in Lahore, Pakistan. In a wide-ranging telephone interview with Al Jazeera’s sports website from the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, the world’s No 3 batsman described the extra responsibility of leading a group of players for whom going about the business of playing cricket meant staring down the barrel of a machine gun.

The attack on the team convoy on March 3 left eight dead, including six Pakistani policemen and the driver of a minivan carrying match officials to the Gadaffi Stadium.

As he prepared to have stitches removed from his own shrapnel wounds on Thursday, Sangakkara also spoke of how he would prevent the mantle of leadership from affecting his record-breaking batsmanship – and how his one-time favourite occupation of sledging the opposition can make or break a player’s game.

Al Jazeera: Congratulations on your appointment today. What does it mean to be leading your country after what happened in Lahore?

]

Sangakkara: It’s always a big responsibility to take on a cricket captaincy, but with what the team has undergone in the last two weeks there is a special significance and dimension to that responsibility.

It is not just about our cricketing skill now, but our group mentality and the need to ensure everyone is firing for the World Twenty20 in England.

We really have to sit down and have a very honest and open discussion about whether what has happened will change the players in any way, to talk about their families and whether we can take something good from what has happened in Lahore.

The Lahore Atrocity: Cricket under Siege

Michael Roberts

This essay was reproduced in Himal South Asian and also in the Island under a different sub-title: “The Lahore Atrocity: Our Cricketing Ambassadors.”

Till recently Chaminda Vaas would have had fond recollections of the Gaddafi Stadium at Lahore. He was in the squad that faced up to Aussie power during the World Cup Finals on 17 March 1996 and prevailed so magnificently. But on Tuesday 3^rd March he was among the Sri Lankan cricketers who underwent a different type of ordeal and survived with fortitude and a good measure of luck.

Ajantha Mendis at airport bearing minor injuries, presumably shrapnel,  from attack.

1996 Colombo & 2008 Mumbai: Comparing 31/1 And 26/11

Michael Roberts

This essay was drafted on 15 Dec. 2008 as sequel to the article on “The Spectre of Terrorism” and was also reproduced in the Island newspaper.

The LTTE commando raid in the quarter of Colombo on 31 January 1996 bears comparison with the Lashkar raid in Mumbai beginning on 26 November 2008. Both struck at the heart of two bustling Asian cities, though the latter had greater reverberations worldwide because of the hyper-cum-hysterical media coverage.