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by Sharm de Alwis

Poetic justice should have prevailed and a draw would have been a fitting result on the Final Day of the Second Test between Sri Lanka and the West Indies.

So many unpleasant features surfaced in the game to mar sportsmanship and this was not tenable when we were playing against a band of cricketers renowned over the years for fair play.

Sanath Jayasuriya should have walked when he knew he had snicked the ball for a catch behind. As a result his halfcentury was a hollow achievement.

Brian Lara has always walked when he knew he was out. The umpire should have made use of he available technology when it was clear, not from a puff but a cloud of dust that the catch was not valid. Jayasuriya would have raised himself to eminence had he recalled the batsman wrongly given out. The panel of erstwhile commentators which included ICC's senior match referee, Ranjan Madugalle, was collectively vexed at the wrong decision.

These two incidents pointed the finger at sharp practice employed by our cricketers who wanted a win at any cost, even at that of decency and fair play.

The incessant appealing, loud like in the market place smacked of grossness and the monkeys which abound the precincts of Asgirirya would have been appalled at the antics.

Kumar Sangakkara was the worst offender. He was akin to Healey or Mongia. He has descended from the norms of decorum which were inculcated in him in a school in which he was captain of cricket, senior prefect and winner of the Ryde Gold Medal for the best all-round boy of his day.

I suppose today's cricket debases like politics, even those who have earlier had impeccable behaviour. Sangakkara must keep in mind that he is of an illustrious lineage where senior prefects who won the Ryde Gold Medal at Trinity have lived an unblemished life on or off the field. To name a few, his kinsmen, R. Sangakkara and Dr. K. B. Sangakkara, M. T. M. Zaruk, M. V. Mushin, Jayantissa Ratwatte, Lakshman Kadirgamar, Dr. David Ratnavale.

The delayed closure of the Sri Lanka innings resulted in panic buttons being pushed in the final overs and I, for one, was rooting for the Windies to draw the match.

As Ramaz Raja commented, the way to lift the team above mediocrity is to think positively of a win, not to salvage a draw. Keith Miller and Denis Compton in their brief stints as captains of their respective countries, always threw the gauntlet to be picked up. A whisker of a chance was given. Steve Waugh did it only the other day against New Zealand.

The big think tanks did not bargain for rain or bad light. If they did, they had insulated themselves against a defeat.

Chaminda Vas, that amiable assassing was guilty of hurling a bumper at Dillon who has no pretensions to being a batsman. I have been nurtured in a different school of thought. Never bowl bumpers at tail-enders. It is like fighting a guy smaller than you.

This opportunity is taken to hand out a bit of advice to the Sinhala cricket commentators. The word 'Trinity' is a noun describing the state of being three-fold; the three persons of the Godhead and may be rendered in translation as 'thriththava' but Trinity (College) is a proper noun and has to be transliterated as Trinity Vidyalaya. Brown and Company is not 'Dumburu Saha Samagam'. Don't forget the mammoth blunder when 'universal joint' was rendered into 'Sarvaloka Puttuwa'.

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