Dialog cares for our cricket

Sri Lanka cricket which was struggling to find sponsors for the national team heaved a sigh of relief with Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel spinning in a sponsorship package worth 4.85 million dollars for the next three years.

Sri Lanka cricket announced this sponsorship deal during Mahela Jayawardena’s media conference where he announced his retirement as captain in all forms of the game.

Due to the slow economic trend, Sri Lanka Cricket failed to attract bids in their first attempt in January. But when fresh bids were called for Mobitel, Dialog and National Development Bank made bids. Apparently Mobitel had been the highest bidder.

‘We care, always’, goes the Mobitel blurb and they have shown how caring they are by playing the right stroke in their push to take the game of cricket in the country forward.

Mobitel has always been in the forefront of sports promotion and have Muttiah Muralitharan, the world highest wicket taker in Test and One-Day cricket in their frame.

Earlier Dialog Telecom came to the rescue of Sri Lanka Cricket sponsoring the team for three months worth 89,000 dollars. Dilmah Tea the earlier sponsor had paid 2 million dollars over a three-year period.

Cricket in the country attracts the most interest as was shown by the big crowds that watched the Sri Lanka-India One-Day and Twenty20 series. The Twenty20 game was a sell-out, with the R. Premadasa bursting at its seams and several thousands unable to get in to enjoy the action.

Historic Twenty20

International cricket’s version of baseball, the first historic Twenty20 was played at the R. Premadasa Stadium on Tuesday and it ended in a thrilling victory for the world champions India by three wickets.

Now with test cricket being given the stepmotherly treatment, Fifty and Twenty20 cricket has come to stay and there is the getting away from the fact that spectators who were bored with Test matches becoming a big yawn are flocking to take in the Fifty and Twenty20 action.

Test cricket which is what the game is all about tended to lose its appeal because the International Cricket Conference, sat on their backsides and did not find ways to make the longer version of the game attractive.

It would not be long before all Test playing nations cut down on Test cricket and concentrate on the limited versions of the game. Because these are the games that would be beneficial to the players and the respective cricket boards.

The limited over versions of the game have now become a necessary evil.

Now that these styles of cricket have come to stay it is useless flogging a dead horse.

To the historic International Twenty 20 that was played in Sri Lanka and that would have done our game immense good if we won it, considering that we would have beaten the world champions in this style of game India. The Lankans gifted the game to their opponents, firstly due to the negative thinking of the selectors and secondly because this being a Twenty20 overs hit out, we bowled 2.2 extra overs.

This was due to the bowlers conceding 14 wides. The world champions conceded only one extra over bowling six wides.

It was apparent as the game progressed that the selectors had boobed in playing pacemen Dilhara Fernando and Lasith Malinga. Fernando is famed for his penchant to bowl no balls and in this game he also bowled wides.

Then Lasith Malinga who was coming back after an injury was thrown to the wolves with the selectors asking him to have a go in this style of which requires that bowlers be spot on.

It was also poor thinking by the selectors to bat Jehan Mubarak in the one drop slot. The manner in which he batted when run making was what mattered, he slowed the run rate that was skyrocketed by Tillekeratne Dilshan and the dashing Sanath Jayasuriya.

The sixes that Jayasuriya hit of Ishant Sharma over the covers and mid wicket fence, the two commentators who were former Indian cricketers Sunil Gavaskar and Arun Lal were stuck for adjectives to describe Jayasuriya’s sixes that sailed like rocket launched.

It was superb timing and brute force that helped Jayasuriya hit these sixes that had everyone watching on the ground and on TV non-plussed. The spectators watching the action went mad shouting for more.

Unfortunately everyone was deprived of watching more Jayasuriya batting brutality because he picked the tallest player, otherwise that shot from which he was caught would have flashed to the boundary and many more strokes would have cascaded from his bat.

Harry Jayawardena

It was sad to hear of the death of former Josephian athlete Harry Jayawardena. Jayawardena was outstanding in athletics and his pet event was the high jump that he sailed over like a ballet dancer.

I had the good fortune of knowing Jayawardena when he was the Sports Editor of the ‘Daily Mirror’ in the sixties and seventies. His forte was athletics and he had immense knowledge and experience to be an expert on the subject.

He was a founder member of the CT and FC along with Carlton Seneviratne, a former Sports Editor of the ‘Daily News’. Both with their expertise took track and field to a high level in the country.

I am not blowing my own trumpet but to say that when I scored a century for the Burgher Recreation Club against Saracens in the early sixties and I did a copy on the match for the ‘Mirror’, reading through it he was surprised that I had made a century and published it in the next-day’s paper with a picture of mine, because he said your picture deserves to be on the sports page, because it was pride for the ‘Times Group’ to know the have a cricketer of your repute.

Jayawardena was a very helpful soul and many were the athletes who benefitted from his coaching. Jayawardena’s other bosom pal was M. Enver Marikkar, the ‘Times’ Correspondent who was known as the ‘king of Kandy’.