By Rex Clementine

Some of the biggest stars of cricket have been flops as captains. Names like Ian Botham, Sachin Tendulkar, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Lasith Malinga were spectacular failures as captains. In sports, in general, a player’s seniority brings him the captaincy. But cricket is different. Captaining a cricket team is not merely walking in for a coin toss. It involves much more. It’s a tactical game. In most sports, coaches make the call. In cricket, captains make the call on the field of play. That’s why your best brain has to lead the side and not your best player. Sadly, in our part of the world, we do not adhere to this concept.

With The Ashes slipping away from England in 1981, Ian Botham stepped down as captain, ‘moments before he was sacked’. On Thursday Wanindu Hasaranga did a Botham ending weeks of speculation about his future as Sri Lanka’s T-20 captain.

The World Cup was bad. Wanindu made some bad calls and Sri Lanka failed to make it to the second round. So did Pakistan and New Zealand. That’s part and parcel of the game. But what was more disturbing was Wanindu’s conduct during the Lanka Premier League.

One day Wanindu was aggressive towards a young player, the next day he copped a hefty fine for using incorrect equipment. These are things that could have been avoided. The Kandy team had been apparently given a prior warning about using the wrong helmet. Everyone else fell in line the next day but not Wanindu. He repeated the offence leaving officials with Hobson’s choice but to fine him. Nobody is bigger than the game. Everyone has to fall in line.

To his credit, Wanindu did win three bilateral series though. Some people brush aside these saying there’s no point in beating Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Well, Afghanistan did make the semi-finals of the World Cup and made the Aussies and the Kiwis eat humble pie.

Wanindu did bring a few good things into the side. He stressed on fielding brilliance and running well between the wickets. He backed certain players he had picked. But he did not treat everyone equally. In any dressing room there will be differences. It is said keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Wanindu kept his enemies at quite a distance. That did not help the team’s cause.

Then, there was an altercation with the umpires. That too in a dead rubber! That landed him in trouble earning a two-match suspension. It was ugly to watch. Wanindu is not the first Sri Lankan to take on an umpire. Others did it for bigger reasons to save people’s careers. Here the captain was trying to be childish protesting over a waist high no-ball. At school when you are starting your cricket you are taught that only two people are infallible: the Pope and the umpire.

Less than a month later he repeated the offence taking on anther umpire. He was facing a four-match ban and literally out of the World Cup. Sri Lanka retained him in the Test squad and let him serve the ban during the Test series.

A third suspension means Wanindu is set to miss eight games. That is too costly affair. Furthermore, with the T-20 World Cup two years away, it is sensible to hand over the captaincy to a new leader at the start of the cycle.

Wanindu is perhaps Sri Lanka’s biggest attraction in T-20 cricket at the moment, He was just misguided. It’s a pity that there was no one to give him sound advice on how to move about things. People keep a close eye on how you move about things. Everything is good when you are winning, but when you lose, it’s hell. As Abraham Lincoln said, ‘victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is an orphan.’