|
SPORTS: CRICKET
The Will To Win
Sri Lanka's victory over India is not merely an on-field
triumph. It is the victory of a small cricketing country with big ideas
over a big nation with small ones.
By Sharda Ugra
So that should settle
it. The Indian cricket team is the absolute pits, incapable of beating
their mums, undeserving of mercy, money and precious minutes of their
public's time. What else could it be now that they've been beaten by Sri
Lanka, who not so long ago took an annual boat trip to play Tamil Nadu
for the M.J. Gopalan Trophy? Thanks to this Indian team, the Sri Lankans
have been treated to their first home series win in two years and the
first-ever over their neighbours. It has come to this: the world's biggest
cricketing country taken out by one of the world's smallest.
|
|
|
|
|
TRUE TRIUMPH: The Sri Lankan team
celebrates after the victory at Colombo
|
Look closer. Size sometimes doesn't matter and
things are never what they seem. Sri Lanka are no longer the pushovers
of international cricket. This is not an excuse for why the Indians lost
both the one-day and the Test series there. It is the reason why the Sri
Lankans are learning how to win.
Sri Lankan cricket has none of what the Indians
do-a long history of international contests, multi-million dollar deals,
a team whose presence puts a 30 per cent premium on any TV rights contract,
Sachin Tendulkar and telephone-number salaries. What the Lankans have
had for a few years now and where the difference is beginning to tell
down the line is in the fine print: it has a plan.
In 1995 the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri
Lanka (BCCSL) outlined its mission to make Sri Lanka the "Best Test
Nation by the year 2000". That hasn't happened but plenty else has-including
the World Cup victory in 1996 which brought money flooding in. Their target
now is the 2003 World Cup. It dominates discussion and administrative
time in Sri Lanka, the reason why telephone lines are buzzing and fast
bowlers are being groomed. From 2000, Sri Lanka have won 31 of their 45
one-day internationals. It is a win percentage (69) better than that of
South Africa (66 per cent, 52 matches, 33 wins), second in the world only
to that of Australia (78 per cent, 44 games, 33 wins) and far ahead of
India's in the same period: 51 matches, 24 wins (47 per cent).
|
|
|
| FOOD FOR
THOUGHT: Ganguly's team is where the Lankans were five years ago
|
|
If any good is to come from it, this series should
help the Indians understand that they are, in reality, exactly where the
Sri Lankans were five years ago: working with a foreign coach to take
the first steps in developing a culture for physical conditioning that
will support and enhance their skill and also trying to develop a synchronicity
of purpose. Aussie Dav Whatmore had a core of experienced players when
he took over the islanders six years ago. New Zealander John Wright has
a bunch of raw recruits but that's not the only difference. The Indians
realise that unless they get the kind of support that the Sri Lankans
do, good news will come only in a very thin trickle.
"Cricket is an industry," says Ranjan
Madugalle, ex-player, ICC match referee, television commentator and member
of the Sri Lankan board's cricket committee, "and to be a top international
side you need ability but you also need to be supported by a top-class
group of administrators." Sri Lankan's current success may give the
impression that the BCCSL functions like a Honda factory. In reality Sri
Lankan board politics makes BCCI's faction fights look like a family dispute
over who will buy the groceries. In the past two years, the board has
been sacked by the government twice and replaced by interim committees.
Last year, there was a grenade attack during a meeting of regional cricket
board officials and during the latest round of board elections, voters
were intimidated by gun-toting thugs. So why is Sanath Jayasuriya's smile
still as big as a saucer? Whatmore has had two stints in Sri Lanka-the
first truncated by the 1999 World Cup defeat-and he has seen all kinds
of administrators come and go. His explanation is simple: "Whoever
comes to power has a vested interest in the team doing well."
At the moment it is an interim committee chaired
by former cricketer Wijaya Malalasekhara, who held high managerial office
in Ceylon Tobacco. Headed by CEO and another former skipper Anura Tennekoon,
there are no less than 46 paid officials working for the BCCSL, including
10 former cricketers who are in executive positions.
This is not the re-establishment of a happy
clique of cricketing aristocrats. These are cricketers who have decided
it is worth getting their hands dirty. Whatmore feels their impact. "I
have full autonomy in training. Anything that is needed to assist the
team is automatically given the green light," he says. It could be
specialised batting and fielding coaches during practice or, like he ordered
against the Indians, grassy Test pitches. The idea was not only to ground
the Indians on green tops but also to get his own batsmen more used to
playing on livelier tracks, which they encounter and struggle on away
from home. It has also helped, he says, "test the ability of the
groundsmen". A set of fast practice pitches have been built at the
Premadasa Stadium and after regularly sending their quick bowlers to the
MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai, Lanka's own pace bowling academy is run
by ex-Test bowler Rumesh Ratnayake. Madugalle chuckles, "We still
talk of the Sri Lankan style of batting and the Sri Lankan smile on the
field. At the same time we've quietly been developing our fast bowlers."
Tennekoon says his board tries to be especially
"mindful" of itineraries. "We try to ensure that there
is a break of at least a month between major series." The Indians
are scheduled to play Test series against South Africa, West Indies, England
and Zimbabwe, but their board would like them to play one-day tournaments
in Bangladesh and Singapore. If the players ask for clothing that is better
suited for hot weather, they are called fussy. The coach needs to make
a special trip to Chennai and BCCI President A.C. Muthiah before a computer
analyst is permitted to travel with the team.
Before the 1996 World Cup win the offices of
the Lankan board had hard-board partitions, typewriters and glass-topped
tables. Today it's air-conditioned, carpeted and computerised but the
area of critical change is two floors down. An ultramodern gymnasium named
after physio Alex Kontouri is the envy of the Indians. At the end of every
Test match day at the SSC Ground, Kontouri and the substitutes jog the
4 km back to the team hotel in the midst of the rush-hour traffic-recognised
but unharassed. The under-19s follow the same fitness programme as the
seniors and the gym is also open to fringe players. Kontouri and Whatmore
have drafted a five-year plan for a uniformity in physical training. The
aim is to have a physio who is in touch with the most modern methods of
training and treatment in each of the 17 cricket playing regions of the
country, someone who will spread and monitor the level of physical conditioning
of as wide a group of cricketers as possible. In India, physio Andrew
Leipus cannot even get a clear-cut calendar for a year which would help
him plan a training schedule to enable the team to reach peak fitness
at critical points in a season. The BCCI has an annual turnover of Rs
300 crore and the Lankan board approximately Rs 45 crore. It doesn't take
a rocket scientist to figure out who's thinking more clearly.
Says Sri Lanka's team manager Air Commodore
Ajit Jayasekara: "No one will allow the team to be derailed. They
are the only thing that brings light into people's lives." At the
gates of their headquarters is the answer to how and why Sri Lankan cricket
keeps moving ahead. Its cricket community has put the full weight of its
beliefs and actions into the words of a granite plaque outside the board's
offices. It reads: "Behind every successful team, there is a nation."
|
METRO TODAY
Web
Exclusives
