No Balling Of Lasith Malinga

Lasith Malinga, Sri Lanka’s star paceman and the most feared Sri Lankan in international cricket has been no-balled by Sri Lanka cricket long before he reached the crease. A one year suspension – suspended for six months – and a fine of 50 per cent of his next ODI match fees were imposed on him for a breach of contract. The offence: Speaking to the media which violates a clause in the contract, it has been said.

Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) President Thilanga Sumathipala was quoted in the press saying that there was no issue with cricketers discussing ‘cricket related matters’ with the media but if there were any administrative issues they had to be taken up with the SLC.

Disciplinarians

Malinga’s ‘offence’ has been that he was responding to stinging public criticism by the Minister of Sports Dayasiri Jayasekera of Sri Lanka players at the recent Champions Trophy held in England. The minister addressing the media had said that Sri Lankan players were the most unfit in the world.

Ministers of Sports of other cricketing nations have not been heard of indulging in such vitriolic outbursts against their own cricketers.  Even their panjandrums, the so called officials, are constrained in making such public criticism. Usually it is an unofficial leak to the press. But Sri Lanka’s Minister of Sports, though not known to have been a cricketer of any grade or even a sportsman known for this prowess in the field, takes upon himself the task of lashing out at Sri Lankan cricketers who played in the Champions Trophy.

The minister was certainly not speaking about ‘administrative matters’ referred to by Sumathipala. He was speaking about ‘dropped catches’, ‘pot bellies’ of the cricketers and their ‘fitness’ and ‘cramps’. We leave it to cricketers and the cricketing public to decide on whether these are ‘administrative matters’ or about the game of cricket itself.

With cricketers being lambasted publicly by a politician unknown and unheard of in the field of sports – though the Minister of Sports – what’s the recourse of the cricketers to defend themselves? All the cricketers, coaches and team officials such as physiotherapists took it lying down save the irrepressible boy from Balapitiya, whose ebullient spirit on the field cannot be curbed as much as his lashing tongue.

 

Monkeys and Parrots

On a Sinhala medium web site, without naming names, Malinga spoke metaphorically.

Malinga is reported to have said: When parrots are in a cage (nest?) monkeys outside are making noises. Only parrots know what’s going on inside the cage. Parrots make the cage and need the cage. When monkeys get in and try to answer on behalf of the parrots there could be issues.

Malinga has shown his literary bent and spoken in metaphors. He has not called any one a monkey but if someone has identified himself as one of the Simian species and put the cap on or if some panjandrum put the cap on his boss, Malinga surely is not to blame?

Besides, is it insulting to be compared with a monkey? Perhaps monkeys may object to the comparison with some humans – monkeys being lovable, mischievous, much more humane and much more endearing than some of our own kind.

Since Charles Darwin propounded his theory on the Origin of the Species, it has been increasingly evident that monkeys and humans have a common ancestry and in this part of the world particularly on the Indian sub-continent monkeys are conferred a certain degree of sanctity. The Indian epic Ramayana has it that the monkey king Hanuman built the bridge across the Palk Strait – Monkey Bridge – for Rama to come over to Sri Lanka and rescue his bride Seetha who was abducted by Sri Lankan King Ravana. The proposed international highway linking India and Asia to Sri Lanka – which would result in the destruction of the Hanuman Bridge – is being stalled by Hanuman worshippers in North India.

So Malinga is on the right side of anthropology, biology and his cricket contract to be faulted with. If some minds construe that by innuendo someone was compared with a monkey, that’s their problem.

He has also made a very valid argument that the Minister of Sports cannot be critical of the said cricket team because the teams picked by national selectors were those approved by the minister.

Nonetheless, he has accepted the charges made and apologized, perhaps for the sake of peace of mind. The Goldilocks of international cricket has performed unique feats – three hat tricks at World Championships (Against South Africa, Kenya and Australia) and but finds uprooting some stumps permanently planted at Maitland Place much more difficult.

 

Cheers for Mangala!

The new Minister of Finance and Mass Media, Mangala Samaraweera made a refreshing, brave and rational speech devoid of the usual hypocritical religious cant cloaked in fabricated piety, in Parliament recently on the need to review the prevailing liquor policy of government.He pointed out that the closure of bars and taverns on Poya days and Christmas Day should be reconsidered because there is evidence that sales and consumption of liquor go up on these days consequent to this ban.

Bar owners sell liquor at home on Poya days and it has been found out that the consumption of Kassippu goes up when the duty on legally produced liquor was increased. The government cannot forcibly reduce consumption of liquor consumption and what can be done is to relax laws pertaining to less harmful types of liquor. He proposed relaxing issuance of licenses for selling wine and beer. Illegal liquor was a problem and illicit brews accounted for 61 per cent of the volume produced, he pointed out.

The Minister needs strong backing of sensible and rational people who have the interests of the people at heart instead of the pious fanatics as well as fanatical moralists with missionary zeal under the cover of being Rationalists who do not give a damn about the fundamental rights of a person to live his life according to his wishes while not endangering the lives of others.

While drinking any form of liquor excessively may be injurious to health, moralists and religious fanatics could have the satisfaction of far greater numbers of Kassippu alcoholics departing from this world than fewer numbers of those consumers of the legal varieties.

We quote a poem written by the Bard of Hultsdorp, the late Mervin Casie Chetty in his compilation Rhyme and Reason under ‘The Kassippu Menace’, way back in the sixties. Casie Chetty, a reputed lawyer of leftist bent, was the President of the Rationalist Society of which the well known prohibitionist Dr. Carlo Fonseka too was a president.

 

The Kassippu Menace

For Argument let us suppose,

That bars and taverns were to close

That spirits malts and other brew,

By Lanka’s laws made taboo;

 

That sparkling toddy from the tree

Had faded to a memory

Those honest men were driven to

Drink Sudhiyas and Kassippu,

 

In sordid dens of reeking vice

Or pay the smugglers heavy price,

Why should this be, why may we not

Enjoy our bottle or our tot?

Men must be free to act and think

And what is more to choose a drink

Does prohibition ever dare

To see the answer to its prayer

A cheerless world condemned to think

That it is wrong to have a drink

To raise a glass or give a toast

To some congenial friends or host

 

Or round off a tired day

With one to drive the blues away

Let prohibitionists beware

Of falling to this great snare

 

Kassippu kings and smugglers wait

Their victory to celebrate

For paradise it would be then -

Another Eden for these men.

 

A note of warning to Minister Samaraweera. There were ministers of finance before him who broke out of the straitjacket of religious hypocrisy and advocated a much more liberal policy on liquor. Dr. N. M. Perera, who made many bold moves to improve the quality of distillery arrack, was engulfed in an avalanche of pious hypocrisy.

He was dubbed: Perre-Ra. Even Prof. G. L. Peries, under Chandrika Bandaranaike said it, but the professor had soon to run for cover. Ravi Karunanayake tried it out with cheap beer. He was promptly called: Beera-Ravi.

Already we hear the barks of the pious from distant Kassippu dens.