Danushka Affair and discipline in high places
The 2022 World Cup T20 cricket competition in Australia is now over.
All that Sri Lankan Cricket has succeeded in doing there is to have the ignominy of leaving behind one of our cricketers – one of our selected national representatives – who has now obtained bail after languishing in an Australian jail awaiting trial on criminal charges.
Worse still, the governing body Sri Lanka Cricket has decided to spend its own money (in other words our national funds) to pay legal fees to the Australian law firm hired to defend Danushka Gunathilaka.
His record as a player who has engaged in repeated acts of misconduct raises two important questions: firstly, why has he continued to be included in the national team despite having received so many warnings for misconduct – and secondly, is his behaviour simply a manifestation of the lack of discipline in Sri Lanka Cricket in particular or in Sri Lankan society in general?
Years ago, when the blunt and no-nonsense Arjuna Ranatunga was Sri Lanka’s cricket captain, he set a standard of discipline in his team that is sadly lacking today. He was a leader who would not hesitate (for their own good) to “blackguard” his players if they did something rash -- as Sanath Jayasuriya often recalls Arjuna doing during a test match in South Africa, an act of chastisement by the captain that spurred Sanath to score his maiden century! Yet Arjuna was a fearless leader who stood by his team against outsiders – as he did when Muralitharan was subjected to harassment by the Australians and no-balled by Umpire Ross Emerson in 1999.
Arjuna was a captain and commander who unilaterally decided, in the days when players were not paid much for representing their country, that the money from Man of the Match awards would be shared by team players. This latter decision was not initially supported by some of his teammates but he carried it out by the force of his personality – and this contributed to forging a team committed to working together and doing their best for the country.
I recall a Pakistani journalist colleague once telling me, speaking of his own country, “Presidents don’t run our country, Prime Ministers don’t run it. Our country is run by crooks, thieves, black market kingpins, and drug dealers. In this part of the world, Governments are simply window dressing -- they are just a front for the real powers that make the decisions. Money talks – and black money talks loudest”.
Sadly that situation is not untrue of our own country today.
What a contrast between Arjuna’s leadership of our national cricket team in those days and our political leadership over the last many years!
Mahinda Rajapaksa was a man who tried to keep all his catchers and pandan kaarayas, his sons and nephews plus his brothers and brothers-in-law happy. He gave away diplomatic assignments, chairmanships of boards and corporations and even the governorship of the Central Bank --appointments that should have been given on merit -- to totally unqualified people which resulted in disastrous consequences for our economy.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa was a man who listened carefully to his carefully selected advisers -- and then went on to do what they advised him to do only if it concurred with what he had (with his limited intelligence) already decided that he wanted to do.
Basil Rajapaksa, of course, was a selfmade man whose main aim was to enrich his maker.
Ranil Wickremesinghe is now our national leader. He has had thrust upon him a team of players with questionable talents and dubious morals. Until he can legally dissolve parliament and call for fresh elections or parliament (at which elections, hopefully, we the electors will act sensibly and give him a better calibre of legislators to work with), he is stuck with this cabal of characters, each interested in promoting himself or herself and obtaining the maximum benefit they can derive from their office.
Our national cricketers need their talents harnessed correctly. They also need to have a culture of discipline instilled and enforced (like Arjuna was wont to do) to prevent any more Danushka-type incidents. So too our cabinet ministers need to function in a disciplined and morally upright manner. If that is too much to ask, the leader needs to enforce and maintain discipline.
Will Ranil be a leader who rises to the occasion, now that he has been given the opportunity to resurrect our nation and establish his place in history?
Or will he merely function as a figurehead, the window dressing of a government where the shots are called not by statesmen of integrity but by crooks and thugs, casino owners and drug dealers, sugar barons and commission seekers?