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Malsiri Kurukulasuriya

It bears no repeating the paramount importance of a strong and knowledgeable Selection Committee.

The set up of selectors varies from country to country. The numbers usually varies between 5 and 7. From this group a chairman is usually elected by the members.

The activities that a Chairman should be involved in are far more that just chairing committee meetings. He should issue weekly schedules to his committee to cover the club matches for the upcoming weekend. He might request a fairly longer input on one or two players that are being considered for various teams that they are mandated to select. It will be unfair to expect them to sit though an entire game. The members should talk it over and decide the times each one could witness a game.

It is a matter for regret that no such facility is available at the District Level. Hopefully, the new board will address this issue. As I have said elsewhere there are talented players, who for any number of reasons, are unable to leave their homes to get to Colombo. As Napoleon said "talent without opportunity is a great waste of human resources". Lets aim to reduce this waste. The last few years have been a nightmare for many players. With the frequent changes there has been no continuity or consistency in our selection procedures.

This shortcoming has dented the careers of so many. Upul Chandana, Chamara Silva, Tilan Samaraweera, Prasanna Jayawardena, Jehan Mubarak, Rangana Pieris, Ruchira Perera etc. etc. None of these guys were given the opportunity to prove their worth. It looks like 2 games to make good or you are history. What have the selectors done to Michael Vandort? He deserved a chance in the Test side; now he is carrying drinks at ODIs!! What is going on? There are many who think the captain and the coach should be co-opted. They are at ground level and as such their input could be valuable. (They will not be involved in the actual selection process).

What should the tenure of a selector be? Many feel 3 years is the optimum. But in order to maintain continuity and consistency a rotational system should be considered. This will be much better than wholesale changes.

Sri Lanka and Pakistan are the only countries that require ministerial approval of national teams. Politics and sports should never mix. The Minister has not the skills of a selection panel to decide one way or another. So what is the justification for such a move? There maybe good reasons for it. I can recall one incident that demanded such intervention. In the late fifties Sri Lanka was invited for their first tour of England. As it turned out the team consisted of the 5 selectors (one of whom was the captain). It was a shock and not only the Minister of Sports but the cabinet got involved. The tour was cancelled. That put our cricket 15 years back.

Maybe Ministerial intervention should be confined to a "national crisis" as in the case above! But not on a routine basis. This will only adversely affect the morale of the selectors.

In conclusion the selectors should have a clear cut policy as to how many consecutive games a debutant would be given to establish his worth. However, they should be flexible enough to revise their policy if there are extenuating circumstances. What we do not wish to see is one or two games and out. A good example was seem at the recently concluded series at Dambulla, Kaushalya Weeraratne returned to the ODI team after recovering from a serious head injury that required treatment in Australia (paid for by the BCCSL).

He came to the side on the back of some good performances for his club side. He bowled a good line and length and his 4 overs yielded under 15 runs. The wicket was unresponsive and 4 overs was hardly a test. He was dropped after the first game and saw no action for the remainder of the tournament. He has the makings of a good all rounder, and hopefully the selectors will give him a serious opportunity.

It will also be a worthwhile exercise if the selectors can establish a rapport with club officials. If this occurs the selectors could mention to the club official to bat or bowl a player at a given position because the selectors wish to see if he is the man they are looking to fill a certain spot in the side.

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