Saturday 9 April 2011

King MADAPAKSHE Personal Political agenda Screwed up Silly lankans dreams...

Following the Mumbai debacle, the captain, the vice captain and select committee resigned. Bayliss made a startling revelation that cricketers had to put up with things that had nothing to do with cricket. What are these things that got nothing to do with cricket? These are known, at least to friends and family of cricketers. Cricketers have a very large number of friends! Soon these will be well known and people will debate over it. Whatever the denials are, there was political involvement in selection, unfortunately. But it had nothing to do with UNP/SLFP/JVP party politics. It was different kind of politics.

He instructed Sri Lanka Cricket to take into account the need to use cricket world cup to the maximum for reconciliation. In turn the Interim Committee instructed the select committee and players what they should do to achieve maximum reconciliation impact. They were told how multiethnic the Indian team was.

Meanwhile the only non-Sinhalese players in the team, namely, Mutiah Muralitharan and Angelo Mathews were injured and were in doubt for the final. However, that would mean playing a “Sinhala only” team according to influential sections and they instructed to somehow include Muralitharan in the team and they insisted that there is no way a team without either Muralitharan and Mathews could play. Reluctantly Murali agreed. He made his decision clear early, days before the final.

At the same time influential sections were complaining about the inclusion of Ajantha Mendis saying that he is still a serving officer of the army. He playing in the final would “hurt” the reconciliation process because Tamils around the world protested his inclusion in previous matches. For the sake of “reconciliation” he was left out!

This was how the two disastrous decisions were made. Murali was included despite his injuries while Mendis was not included because his involvement may not be acceptable to some Tamils as he is serving in the army. Angered by the stupid decision, a section of the team was furious but had to put these at the back of their minds and continue. Anything that showed disunity in the team at this stage would have been disastrous for the team’s prospects. Some argue that the captain had already given up a day before the final due to these political interferences.

Ultimately the substandard team that played in the final lost mainly due to weak bowling. Mendis was out and Murali was not up to his hundred percent. Early breakthroughs could not be used to build on. Another unfortunate event happened in Hatton after the match. Two groups of people belonging to two ethnic groups clashed over the final match resulting in damages to property. The disastrous outcome at the final caused by a foolish attempt at Personal Political Agenda of reconciliation ended with worse consequences.

Wednesday 6 April 2011

For India, Interests of Tamilnadu is more important than interests of Sri Lanka....

Three days after the World Cup final, officials from Sri Lanka are not happy with the level of courtesy extended to their President Mahinda Rajapaksa during his trip to Mumbai to watch the final.

Though no official complaint has been lodged with the Indian government, they have informally conveyed their displeasure at limited tickets made available to Rajapaksa’s entourage, and at the refusal let him meet the teams before the start of the match.

“The tickets for the Sri Lankan president were being organised by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). We would have been more happy if we had more tickets for the entourage,” the Sri Lankan Consul-General in Mumbai, Upekkha Samaratunga, told Mumbai Mirror.

Rajapaksa had decided to come to India for the final after Sri Lanka’s semi-final victory over New Zealand in Colombo

A request for 40 tickets was made to the BCCI through the Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka.Around the same time, the cricket board got another request for 36 passes from Rashtrapati Bhawan for Indian President Pratibha Patil and her group.

“Since it was not possible for us to accommodate everybody at such short notice, we made 10 passes available to both the leaders in President’s Box at the stadium,” BCCI’s Chief Administrative Officer Ratnakar Shetty said.

“Since the Indian President is from Mumbai, we made another 20 passes available to her at the Garware pavilion. As for the Sri Lankan President, we could offer him only 10 additional passes in the Garware stand.”

Board officials said that since they were aware that Sri Lanka’s Sports Minister CB Rathnayake had purchased 40 tickets for the Garware stand a few weeks ago, they advised the Presidential entourage to use some of the seats blocked by him.

“In addition to that, I believe the Sri Lankan board president bought 10-15 more seats in the Vithal Divecha stand. But there was no problem,” Shetty said.

A senior official of the Maharashtra government said the Lankans were also upset because Rajapaksa’s request to meet the Sri Lankan players before the start of the match was denied at the last minute.

In the India vs Pakistan semi-final in Mohali, both Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Indian PM Manmohan Singh had the teams before the match began.

Consul-General Samaratunga said that a meeting with the players was scheduled in the President’s programme, but was later changed by Indian authorities.

Further, Rajapaksa was not allowed a picture opportunity with the winning Indian after the final.

When contacted, an MEA official in New Delhi said that Rajapaksa had not been invited by India, he had himself asked to come over.

In Mohali, Gilani was our guest. That’s why he was taken on the field to meet the players. “If there was no on-the-field interaction in Mumbai, it could be because of protocol issues.”

When contacted, the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India, Prasad Kariyawasam, confirmed that no complaint had been lodged with the Indian government on the issue, the Mumbai Mirror reports.