Pants for pay: Running cricket Sri Lanka style

before.

This is what Sri Lanka Cricket had to say in its brief statement:

“The President and the Executive Committee of Sri Lanka Cricket are perturbed by the reported incident that had occurred with the causal ( sic!) workers engaged as ground laborers (???) at the Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium in Sooriyawewa last evening (11th).”

“An inquiry has been initiated into the matter and whilst stern action will be taken against those responsible, Sri Lanka Cricket wishes to apologize to those subjected to this ignominy, and will take steps to ensure they are compensated.”

One wonders whether there is a causal connection between the Committee’s desire to apologise for the “ignominy” and the reference to the youth as “laborers” instead of workers or ground staff. It sure seems that somebody wants to heap further ignominy on the staff who had already lost their trousers not to mention their self-respect, however poor they may be.

How are these “laborers” going to be compensated? Please don’t tell us that it would be by returning to the wearers the logo-carrying trousers presented on a platter so that they could traverse the length and breadth of Hambantota displaying the booty and their elevated status.

So a “perturbed” cricket committee is holding an inquiry. This country has held so many inquiries in the last two and a half years-some called commissions and others simple committees -- that it certainly qualifies to be called the “Wonder of Asia.”

What has happened to the myriad of inquiry reports? Some have been available to the public. Others have remained hidden from public gaze. What happens after the reports are handed over to the relevant authority remains a matter of conjecture.

Since the national airline is so much in the news (so what’s new some might ask) consider the case of the report of the Weliamuna Committee. It was appointed by the yahapalanaya government to inquire into the never-ending shenanigans in SriLankan Airlines over which so-much was said at election- time over two years ago. The committee was appointed apparently by the very persons who appointed the airline’s board of directors.

The result: the great minds of SriLankan Airlines headed by Dias the Pious dumped the report in the trash bin as their own meagre contribution to the garbage problem, probably because some of those named in the report against whom action was prescribed were still nicely ensconced in the hierarchical seats as decision-makers and still others had some useful connections.

The President, perturbed like our cricket authorities, summoned the airline board for a telling off that has resulted in one member throwing in the towel while the head honcho took flight to London, it is said, perhaps to contemplate his navel and the future.

If you need more evidence of Sri Lanka’s cornucopia of wonders take that strike- crazy collection of stethoscope wearers. Those interested in collective nouns will know that a collection of baboons is called a parliament. What caused them to earn this appellation seems quite obvious. They are noisy, abrasive, viciously aggressive and the least intelligent of all primates.

Perhaps somebody will come up with an appropriate collective noun for the GMOA which is surely the only body of doctors which is constantly on strike without a care in the world for the sick and infirm unless they treat them in private hospitals where they can earn additional fees.

Have you ever heard of a collection of doctors threatening to contact foreign diplomatic missions to complain about the Health Ministry or convey their own woes?

Before long these medicine men will ask for diplomatic passports and immunity along with duty-free vehicles to travel to their places of private practice, special places in leading schools for their children and a weekly meal for the whole family at a five-star hotel and an annual family holiday abroad.

Where would you find such soap operas but in this “Wonder of Asia”.

If the government has any intention of cleaning up sports bodies, especially Sri Lankan Cricket where money flows like the flood waters of the Kelani River, politicians should be banned from holding office in them. That should be the starting point for cleaning up this environmental pollution.