When failures boast of success

by Rex Clementine

Former Sports Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage, lamenting the sorry state of Sri Lankan cricket, has recalled how the game was run during his tenure as Sports Minister in 2014. His boastful claims reminded us how disastrous his tenure as the Sports Minister was.

One of the first things that Mahindananda did soon after assuming duties as Sports Minister was to pack the Cricket Board with his Royal College buddies – Eshana de Silva and Sarinda Unamboowe.

Aluthgamage has a remarkable ability to handpick square pegs for round holes.

SLC constructed a brand-new cricket stadium and extensively refurbished two other grounds ahead of the 2011 World Cup while Aluthgamage was the Sports Minister. Questions were raised over the manner in which funds were spent on those constructions. There were calls for a probe. Curiously, they fell on deaf ears. The computer hard disks at SLC went missing under mysterious circumstances. Mahindananda did not take action against SLC, for the Cricket Board was full of his or his political master’s buddies.

Mahindananda has bragged that during his tenure as the Sports Minister the national cricket team was ranked number two. If not for his unnecessary meddling with running of the sport, Sri Lanka could have gone on to become number one. Don’t believe us. Ask the then captain Kumar Sangakkara, who at one point claimed that Mahindananda was all out to discredit his reputation.

The then Head Coach Trevor Bayliss was known for maintaining a very low profile but not even he could help exposing serious deficiencies in the game, and publicly wished cricket administration were without political interference. Mahindananda was like a cat on a hot tin roof at that point. But a majority of Sri Lankans agreed with Bayliss’ well-observed comments.

Bayliss was replaced by Geoff Marsh, a fine sportsman and a coach who had the rare distinction of winning both the Ashes and the World Cup, first as a player then as a coach.  The Island covered both his assignments in UAE against Pakistan and the tour of South Africa in 2011. The way he developed the team, especially the young players, was quite remarkable,

South Africa is such a hard place to compete in. Usually, Sri Lankan teams would lose there, inside three days, mostly by an innings or other heavy margins. But Marsh made a complete turn-around and Sri Lanka won the Boxing Day Test match in Durban. The press hailed Marsh as the man who could bring back the glory days of Sri Lankan cricket. At the end of the tour, Mahindananda did something nobody expected. Guess what. He had Marsh sacked! The tough Aussie proved he was made of sterner stuff; he successfully sued SLC, which had to pay him a hefty amount by way of compensation. All this happened while Mahindananda was the Sports Minister.

Don’t forget that during Mahindananda’s tenure as the Sports Minister, Sri Lanka Cricket went bankrupt; it could not even pay players, coaches, employees and contractors so much so that the government had to bail it out. Thus, Mahindananda’s excesses became a burden on the poor taxpayer.

More recently, Mahindananda did what he is adept at—having egg on his face. He claimed that the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup had been fixed. The players were up in arms and wanted their names cleared.  It was a great game of cricket and the better team on that day – India – won. The ICC issuing a statement said that it had no reason to believe that the 2011 final was corrupt.  ICC Anti-Corruption chief Alex Marshall also refuted claims that Mahindananda had reported his suspicions to the ICC in 2011. A bull in a China shop is less troublesome than Mahindananda.

All in all, Mahindananda’s five-year tenure as Minister of Sports was a disaster. It is laughable that he is now offering unsolicited advice to SLC, which is at least a democratically-elected body. While he was the Sports Minister, his cronies were going places, and corruption and waste were rampant at SLC. Officials were spending money like drunken sailors hitting town. No wonder the board went bankrupt.