Cricket is not the beginning and the end of the world. It is a good game, a game that moulds young men into gentlemen and model citizens as they grow up. Let countries in the region not be fooled into a sense of delusion for the want of better achievements in the wider world of sportsand a more satisgying life for its restless billions.
by I.S. Senguttuvan
(April 04, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) So finally it is over. Cricket is the ultimate winner. Arguably, if Sangakkara continued to build on the firepower Malinga generated to send the Indian super-stars Shewag and Tendulkar to the pavilion in quick succession, Sri Lanka would have been the happy winners. The Indian team was shocked and in fear; the wild and enthusiastic crowd became eerily silent and Mahinda Rajapakse had reason to smile when that young man with that colourful flock of hair was getting things his way the ageing President Pratiba Patil, glued to her seat next to the Lankan President, may have been wondering where she is, what is this game she is watching and why she is there at all as Malinga ran riot in the field.
Why did Sangakkara remove him at that stage and allowed the disoriented Gambir and Kohli to build an innings remains a mystery. But then cricket is a strange game and those stories of the uncertainties of the Game of Gentlemen is now legion. While everybody loves Murali and will not deny him a fitting farewell , the fact was this is almost a life-and-death game between the two sides and Murali was in suspect fitness. All 6 commentators in unison were to say his condition was such he could not effectively spin the ball. Then why was he not set aside and the wily and much feared Ajantha Mendis – who had run through India in a final earlier – retained. Of course, Murali could have been honoured in a myriad of other ways to his acceptance.
Another former Editor elsewhere writes of the faux pas in that undiplomatic invitation sent to the Kiwi PM – when that country is still in virtual mourning. The man said he was far busy to accept the invitation. Who is the ratharang moley behind this rib-tickler?
That visit to the Shri Venkateeswarar Temple in Tirupathi enroute Mumbai is yet another miscalculation that President Rajapakse should have been advised against. To start with, what made a man of established Sinhala Buddhist traditions from the depth of the Ruhuna – with more than one honorific from the Goigama Mahanayakes in Kandy - to chose a Tamil/Telugu place of worship all the way in India to pray for good-luck for the Sri Lankan cricket team. Even someone demented imagination within his entourage should have told him while he prays for the happiness of 20 million the goodwill of those deities there must have been thousands more that may have sought the blessings of the same diety on behalf of 1,200 million Indians. They wanted the same victory too. Was this some form of attempt to create among celestial beings too. The question is was this act of piety only for Lankan Buddhist Sinhala consumption. Was it out of religious fervour , cheap show or sheer misplaced hypocracy? Why did he chose the Indian temples over the Buddhist in Anuradhapura, Kandy of even the Gangaramaya – the home of an established government, Podi Hamuduruwo - being its Chief Incumbent. To the credit of Indian PM Man Mohan Singh he did not hit the nearest Gurdwara. Perhaps the ex-World Bank and Cambridge scholar is satisfied politics, sports and religion should be kept as far as possible. India's team of mostly Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims does not allow it to be subject to cheap tricks under the name of religion either within the country, when they leave the country or arrive from overseas visits. Neither does religion play a part similarly with the British, Australian or any other Cricket team to the extent we have devalued religion to – a suspect example said to be set by Arjuna Ranatunga. the man is reported to have planned his political career while playing Cricket.
While we are proud of the cricketing standards in South Asia, it is best we remind ourselves this game is played in only about a dozen countries of the 200 plus countries in the world. It is commercialism that has gained for itself an audience of the reported one billion – a sixth of the world’s population How many, in fact, play cricket in these British and former colonies? India, hungry for global accolades in the world of sports, has its own reasons for the disproportionate hype. It is again a credit to this little country when Duncan White broke a World Record in Athletics in the London Olympics of 1948 – the first Asian to do so in the world. That is by far the greatest sports achievement at the global level by a son of this soil so far. It certainly is the best performance by an Asian - with the exception of a Korean athlete who won a Gold Medal when he ran when Korea was occupied by Japan in the early decades of the 20th century. Even the US Olympic team of 1956 that notched 74 medals (Gold/32 Silver/25 and Bronze 17) went about matters with less frenzy. So did France when they won the FIFA World Cup in 1998 a game played by the largest number of people in virtually every country of the world of over 6 billion.
Cricket is not the beginning and the end of the world. It is a good game, a game that moulds young men into gentlemen and model citizens as they grow up. Let countries in the region not be fooled into a sense of delusion for the want of better achievements in the wider world of sportsand a more satisgying life for its restless billions.
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