by Rex Clementine

A senior sports writer warned us that less than ten percent of people who read this article are going to like it. But facts are stubborn. As one visionary priest – late Fr. Bernard Quintus OMI used to say, ‘cheap popularity is not going to get us anywhere.’ With the stepping down of Ashantha De Mel, cricket has found a scapegoat on whom all sins are pinned. It’s as if Sri Lankan cricket hit rock bottom due to De Mel’s blunders. The truth is far from it.

De Mel has been shredded to pieces in social media. At this rate, he will be even blamed for the extreme heat that people are experiencing in Mannar these days and not Rishad. Most of the things said about De Mel are not true. For example that his wife is related to Shiranthi Rajapaksa, the wife of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa! That’s a total fabrication. 

However, what is true is that De Mel was Chairman of Selectors when Sri Lanka reached the finals of three World Cups – in 2007 in the Caribbean, in 2009 in London and in 2012 at RPS. For record’s sake, he was also Chairman of Selectors when Sri Lanka whitewashed England in their own backyard 5-0 in 2006. During his tenure, the national cricket team won Test matches in Pakistan, New Zealand, England, West Indies and South Africa.

There’s a lot to like about De Mel; lot of things that people dislike. The foremost of them being that he minces no words and calls a spade a spade. Selectors are supposed to take unpopular decisions. He has taken plenty of them, including the sacking of Arjuna Ranatunga.  He was the Chairman when Marvan Atapattu was picked in the 2007 World Cup squad but benched for all games. When Marvan vented his anger calling his selection panel ‘a bunch of puppets headed by a joker’, at the Gabba, De Mel bore the brunt of it and never spoke against Marvan. That’s a hallmark of someone who has matured doing the job.

People who have stoned and crucified him have conveniently forgotten that he was Chairman of Selectors when Sri Lanka recorded one of their greatest wins in the history 18 months ago – a Test series win in South Africa. He was vilified when he picked Oshada Fernando and Lasith Embuldeniya out of the blues. The press, including yours truly, asked what they had done to merit selections. But as uncle Percy says, ‘De Mel knows his onions’. He has this rare ability to spot talent and persevere with them.

Those two selections proved to be a masterstroke.  Both players made match winning contributions as Sri Lanka became the first Asian nation to win a Test series in South Africa.

We Sri Lankans by nature tend to find quick fixes rather than going to the bottom of an issue. So as our batting crumbled against England, all blame was placed on De Mel’s doorstep. Is he also doubling up as Batting Coach apart from his multiple roles as Chairman of Selectors and Manager?  It’s so sad to see that nobody is holding Grant Flower accountable.

This is not to say that we agree with all decisions of De Mel. His biggest blunder was appointing Lasith Malinga as T-20 and ODI captain. Once he gave the captaincy to Lasith, it was extremely difficult to get it back. Lasith and captaincy is like Ranil and UNP leadership. Cricket being a gentleman’s game Lasith eventually gave in.  Ranil bats on regardless – no shame whatsoever. Sir John Kotelawala must be spinning in his grave.

De Mel’s other biggest fault was giving in to political pressure and accommodating that ‘three dimensional’ cricketer Jeevan Mendis into the World Cup squad in 2019. We always think that Jeevan Mendis is the Michael Jordan of Sri Lanka. Once in every four years the Bulls legend made a cameo appearance for the Dream Team during the Olympics and so does our hero who is indispensable when a World Cup is around the corner. His Thomian pedigree took him places – if you can read between the lines.

You can blame De Mel as much as you want but you better find out a new  scapegoat by April when Bangladesh are going to be here. We have already got one in mind – Ashley de Silva.

Cricket authorities need to take both long term and short term steps to avoid a catastrophe against Bangladesh. The short term answers are  getting two ‘A’ teams to visit Sri Lanka and get our second string to play competitive cricket and try and see whether the replacements for Dilruwan Perera and Niroshan Dickwella can be found. At the moment, these guys have had it too easy. There’s no one breathing down their neck.

The long term solution is fixing domestic cricket. This SLC is hell bent on not doing because they will be antagonizing those clubs who vote them into positions. The Sports Minister has promised to address the issue to introduce a competitive domestic tournament. So did his predecessors. The only thing that is certain about a politician and his promises are that they can be broken.

So instead of blaming De Mel, we need to address the real issues. Unless we do that, we are fooling ourselves. No individual is at fault for this mess. The blame needs to be placed on the doorstep of SLC and their short sighted policies. The initial plan was to have eight teams play First Class cricket. When people triple it, we are asking for trouble. And then we are blaming De Mel for all our problems.

As said at the start, there is a good possibility of 90% of our readers not liking this article. Thank you for being one of them.