Declining standards of our cricket

THERE was a time when the second string Sri Lanka team referred to as the 'A' side were competent enough to hold their own against similar sides from other countries, most of all England.

Looking back at past tours here by England 'A' sides one can safely say that there is a falling standard of our cricket from what it was two decades ago.

Mark Nicholas's side found it heavy going against Sri Lanka 'A' in 1985-86 and the best they could come up was five drawn unofficial tests. Five years later Hugh Morris' side had also to be content with three drawn 'tests'.

The trend was broken by Nick Knight's side when they won the 3-match unofficial test series 2-0 (1 drawn) in 1997-98. That perhaps was the beginning of the decline of Sri Lanka's cricket resources. Gradually over the years the quality of the players produced have kept on diminishing.

How much the future of Sri Lanka's cricket has dipped and that of England is on the rise can be gauged the way England 'A' led by Ian Bell thrashed the daylights out of their hosts at the CCC grounds on Thursday.

Whereas England have made big strides to uplift the quality of their players so that it reflects in their cricket, sad to say Sri Lanka have not gone about the way it should despite having started rather belatedly an cricket academy of their own about two years ago.

The biggest coup the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) probably pulled off was getting Rod Marsh, then head of the much reputed Australian Cricket Academy to come over and take charge of the ECB National Academy.

That happened three years ago and in the past 20 months or so Marsh has also been absorbed into the England selection committee as one of the selectors, which was another clever move.

The result of all this is the stocks of English cricket has risen to immeasurable heights.

Not only is the England senior side under Michael Vaughan performing outstandingly well, but they also have a very good back up side under Bell to take over whenever a vacancy arises in the senior side.

The recipe for Australia's success has been to have a strong second side capable of putting pressure on the seniors. "The best sides are those with players putting pressure on the 1st XI who perform because they have to perform," has been Marsh's views.

Critics over the world have been raving over the ECB cricket academy. Some says it is the best in the world much better than the one in Australia. Of the 15-member England 'A' team currently on tour here, Bell, Clarke, Mahmood, Shah, Gidman, Prior and Swann have all come through the academy.

While Marsh is here won't it therefore be a good idea for Sri Lanka Cricket to make use of his experience and expertise to upgrade our academy and for the head coach to learn a few hints from him?

Selection committee

The term of the present national cricket selection committee will terminate at the end of the month and SLC will be submitting names who they think are suitable to serve for the ensuing year. However the final choice of who should serve in the committee lies with the Sports Minister.

The present committee of seven comprises of only two nominees from SLC although they submitted the names of five. The remaining five are the choice of the Sports Minister.

The SLC we understand has indicated to the Minister that having seven members in the committee is too unwieldy and that they would like it to be either four or five.

How many of the present committee headed by former Sri Lanka fast bowler Ashantha de Mel will be retained is a matter of conjecture.

From recent events that have taken place it seems the committee needs to be re-hauled because of the presence of a few bad eggs who are working to private agendas to ensure that they get their favourite cricketers in.

The latest ruse they have started is to leak out the names of squads even before the committee has finalized them and spread false news which was swallowed by an unsuspecting newspaper (not ANCL) and published.

The Sports Minister has a binding task when appointing the next selection committee to keep Sri Lanka cricket clean of such elements.