Gone for a six

Through out last week, did we have any good sports news in our country? Did we have anything joyful to read in our sports pages? Well my opinion is no. When I read these articles I remembered some of the incidents I have personally faced and some others which were happened to my friends.

Most recent jumbles seen in Rugby field. It starts with the battles between couple of school teams’ couple of months back. One ugly battle was between Royal and Isipathan. Another unfortunate battle finishes with a wise decision by Kings wood college to drop the case against Trinity even though couple of their boys got injured. A Sri Lankan winger was suspended over his alleged role in the assault of a school referee at this match. After this incident there was a rumor that referees threaten to boycott Bradby. But finally they agreed. Same as there are 2 cases pending against St Anthony’s and Wesley. What I couldn’t understand here is it seems even the principles in schools promoting unethical behavior of school players. They suppose to teach their players to accept defeat and victory both. But today what happened is even under aged players and hired professionals included in teams just focusing on the victory.

I feel that there’s a “Jonah” with the sports of this country. The only sport we emerged a world level is Cricket. No need to write about the interim committee and the other misconduct take place at ICCSL, today. This situation is no much difference with other sports of this country. During the time period of one of the sports ministers (who was famous for VISA racket), most of the committees of sports unions were broken and ruined. This is the wound at the top level of the sports field. But there are enough and more other barriers also for younger players to come up. We all know that there are many talented players in the school level. But most of the times they are never visible after they finish their schooling. In every sport there’s some thing sad.

In some sports, only some families can win the matches. I do agree that those players are talented. Without talent you can’t play any match. But same as there are many other kids who are with the same capabilities. They are really discouraged to enter the arena. May be they are not rich enough to access the national level coaches or their parents have not much idea how to enter their kid to a match. Only few people know how the draws work in these tournaments. I remember at once in a leading Buddhist girl’s school, the teacher in charge received some of the invitations to divide between school team to participate in an Indian open tournament. She gave the invitations to players after the tournament was finished. Her explanation was she though that their players were not good enough to play with Indian teams. How inhuman? Those talented girls may not have won the Indian match. But that could have been a very good experience for them.

In some sports only some of the coaches can make players. Simply because they do not let others to win. When it comes to foreign matches, only their players can participate. If I say the sport any one who has played knows these incidents and people. Since personal insulting is not my aim, I will put it this way. Now if you play cricket, if you hit a six, umpire can’t say it’s not a 6. But there are some sports, where the judgment is fully at the referee’s discretion. In such games young players do not have a future sporting career unless they become part of the “gang”.

I know that there are good things as well as bad things. I know that there are teachers, coaches, officers, unions who really love the sport and play by rules. Why the pin point is always at the bad side is, because we have to sort out these things if we are to be stronger as a nation. Ultimately every time our players perform well, pride is on our side. They will be most probably good will ambassadors of this country. Therefore we have to speak against the injustice. If not these young players may think that this country is such a bad place and they will start hating it and there’s a chance that kids who are brought up seeing the injustice happened to them, may not be good citizens one day.


If any of you have similar experience please share with us. Because if the communication channels are stronger and if we can shed some light on general public that this is happening, there may be a possibility of reducing it.