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| Sunday, 30 March 2003 |
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Bringing home the trophy without the captain by Srian Obeyesekere Sudarshini Sivanathan is the captain of the Sri Lanka women's cricket team which she led to a series victory over the West Indies recently. But Sudarshini along with colleagues Hiroshi Abeysinghe and Ramani Perera might well have played their last innings for their country. The trio were notable absentees when the team boarded the Air Lanka flight back home last Wednesday from London's Heathrow Airport. It was a shameful blow for the country's cricket. For the 6-0 whitewash by the Lankan lasses of their West Indian counterparts had been seen as something to smile about for a nation bemoaning the battering our male bastions had received at the hands of India and Australia at the World Cup. A right royal welcome had been lined out for the lasses back home. But the sweet ardour of a tumultuous return at the Colombo airport quickly disintegrated turning out to be as gloomy as when the men's team arrived the day before as the lasses made it down the gangway holding aloft their trophy minus their captain and two others in their rank. The next morning newspaper headlines as well as the radios screamed the news that three women cricketers had gone missing at the Heathrow Airport just before emplaning. As the President of the Women's Cricket Association, Mrs. Gwen Herath recounted, the trio had been together with the rest only 15 minutes before embarkation. "But when the manageress, Mrs. Munaweera realised they were missing as the rest were about to board the plane it was too late to do anything. A complaint was lodged with British Airways which had flown the team from the West Indies", said Mrs. Herath. But subsequent inquiries revealed that Sudarshini, Hiroshi and Ramani had multiple visas for up to six months and were well within their rights to stay back. They might or might not return. But the crude action by the cricket captain and her two charges of giving the rest of their colleagues the slip is one of the commonest methods of decamping by sportsmen and women since the 1980s when two wrestlers stayed back after a tournament in Canada. According to an official, defections are seen as a passport to making money. "Even on a two-month long visa there are various odd jobs which though could fetch in the least about Rs.75,000 a month for illegal workers while through the legal channels could fetch as fantastic a salary as upto Rs. 3 lakhs. Something they cannot earn back home where an average wage would be around Rs.15,000", he elaborated noting that some managed to get jobs on extended visas as well. Some have returned after making their pot of gold. Some of the most notable defections were by some cyclists in 1996, 2 cyclists, some volleyballers who toured Germany and Korea in the 1990s, an athlete and coach at the Asian Games in Hiroshima in 1998, and an athlete and wrestler at last year's Manchester Games. The desertion of the team by the women's cricket captain and two colleagues has drawn angry reactions. Mrs. Herath, who has run the game almost singlehandedly for donkeys years, looks down on it as one of the most insubordinate actions. "It is certainly a very bad example to the others especially for the captain to have done this. When you go as a team, you must return as one, and after such success. If they intended to stay back as their visas permitted they should have informed us. But they did not contact me or even their parents", she said while announcing that the offenders would come under the hammer of a disciplinary inquiry. As it was, the West Indies tour was looked as a forerunner to preparing for the next World Cup. While the women cricketers do not come under the ambit of the Sports Ministry, defections, though not alarming, drawn the attention of the authorities, the most striking being last year's defection at the Manchester Games with the Minister of Sports, Johnston Fernando announcing that deterrent action would be taken in the future. And it could come soon. Director of Sports, Milton Amarasinghe, when contacted by the `Sunday Observer' on Friday said,"The deterrent could be by way of a bond. I have suggested to the Ministry that a bond would effectively mean a guarantor from whom the cost of the Government could be collected. We are spending public money to send athletes and this would be the best way of recovering if they go and don't come back", he reasoned. A deterrent those who run women's cricket can take a cue from. |
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