No other cricketing nation has been battered by terrorism quite like Sri Lanka. The civil war erupted barely two years after we gained Test status and an armed insurrection simmered in the south. Killings were rampant, a President, Ministers, military commanders and activists were all consumed by the violence. Curfew was as routine as a morning roll call and schoolchildren travelling by bus or train were drilled to watch out for suspicious parcels.

We grew up in a country where doubt lurked around every corner. That is why it is galling that the ambassadors now representing our flag seem to have forgotten where they come from. They are behaving as though they hail from the Swiss Alps, not Richmond Hill. A reality check is long overdue.

Credit to Sri Lanka Cricket for putting their foot down and reminding the players in no uncertain terms that no one is bigger than the game. Led by captain Charith Asalanka, several senior cricketers, most of them his old Richmond College mates, wanted to pull the plug on the Pakistan tour and dash home after a bombing in Islamabad. The team was in Rawalpindi by the way. Someone should have reminded them that Martin Crowe carried on with a tour when Navy Commander Clancy Fernando was assassinated right outside the Taj Samudra, the New Zealand team hotel.

Someone should also remind Mr. Asalanka and company that both India and New Zealand continued their tour without a whimper when Black Tigers stormed the Bandaranaike International Airport and the adjoining Air Force base, destroying many aircraft and fighter jets in 2001.

Cricket, through all this, refused to be cowed. So much so that when the Barmy Army had cold feet ahead of England’s 2004 tour, The Guardian’s David Hopps famously wrote that the odds of an English fan missing the tube in London was higher than being attacked in Sri Lanka.

Yet the new rich in our current squad are behaving as if violence is something they’ve only seen on movies. Their childish theatrics deserved a stern word. When players threatened to abandon the tour, SLC promptly prepared replacements and only the fear of losing their places made the squad do a U-turn. They had no business holding the game to ransom. They were offered VVIP security, lockdown travel corridors, even empty-stadium matches if needed. What more could you possibly ask for?

Asalanka is the sharpest cricketing mind we have seen since Mahela Jayawardene and arguably the best finisher since Arjuna Ranatunga. But talent does not place you above the sport. In recent months, his behaviour has been unbecoming and this episode was the final straw. When he returns home, he owes stakeholders an explanation and an inquiry must demand one.

This is Pakistan’s hour of need. A nation that has steadfastly stood by Sri Lanka despite being ravaged by its own internal crises would have suffered another blow had we abandoned them.

When Wasim Akram rallied Pakistan players to join a combined Indo-Pak XI in Colombo ahead of the 1996 World Cup, after Australia and West Indies boycotted the tour following the Central Bank bombing, he showed what solidarity in cricket truly means. He was class. Charith has much to learn from Wasim.

But even before Wasim, there was Abdul Hafeez Kardar.

Kardar had played Test cricket for India before partition and was Pakistan’s first Test captain. He was a statesman in every sense, championed Sri Lanka’s push for Test status from the 1970s onward. He wasn’t all talk. He was a doer. He founded the Ali Bhutto Trophy between Pakistan and Sri Lanka Under-19s, a series that unveiled Javed Miandad and Ranjan Madugalle. He ensured Pakistan’s coaches and curators travelled here to uplift our cricketing infrastructure and did much more.

Former SLC chief Hemaka Amarasuriya once said that players entering the Max Cricket Academy must first learn the history of the game. You feel Asalanka and his Richmond clan could do with a few chapters on Kardar.

Because if there’s one eternal truth in cricket, it is this: no player, no matter how gifted, is ever bigger than the game. You can only recall Shakespeare’s legendary words on Brutus in Julius Caesar, ‘The fault, dear Charith, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’

by Rex Clementine