Cleaning up sports: No end to it!

I am shaking rocks! This was a claim made by the Minister of Sports (MOS) in a banner headline run in a recent news article. There is no doubt that he has certainly made a start. In what he claims is the biggest cleanup ever, he has dared to remove some big rocks; the reference to Sigiriya is intriguing because it was a bastion of a king who came down the mountain to defend his kingdom.

Not so our gladiators, who in the swipe of a ministerial pen, have been relegated to the sin bins and with good reason. Notable among them are the Athletics and the Tennis Chiefs who had overstayed their tenures and wished to linger because of the largesse that these positions offer. Regrettably though, Sports Ministers of the past have made similar grand statements and merely gone their merry way. However, there is a noticeable difference in the recent deliberate actions and chances are that the MOS means business this time around.

Cricket and rugby
The MOS has however jostled with SL Cricket and had more than a finger in SL Rugby. These orchestrations in the full glare of media scrutiny have gone unabated for so long that the public was left to wonder what the real objectives were.
Many believe that SL Cricket is run by the MOS and the Cricket Secretary with the figurehead Cricket President quite satisfied with the glamour of the prestigious position. Rugby has also been enriched by the unbridled interest of the MOS who has created his own Rugby Team as if he had nothing better to do. The conflict of such an enterprise does not apparently weigh heavily on his conscience and how big a rock will impact on the Rugby Union is not a concern he worries about.
Talk about people in glasshouses throwing stones; in this case we are talking about moving rocks but as is plain to see, an even hand does not appear to prevail, rather a kissing goes by favour syndrome that is unfortunately the order of the day.

Football’s favoured status
Football is a classic case of this favoured status. Here is a sport languishing in a degrading leadership grip of 40 years without commensurate development or progress except for the benefit of a few. Knowledgeable critics have time and again relied on the private media to voice their frustrations and appeal to the MOS and the President himself, but to no avail as the cavalcade moves on.
It is reported that the MOS met the Football Ex-Co recently to caution them and demand that effective improvements are required immediately. However, here too he has compromised that demand by seeking the assistance of the FFSL to play an international football game against the Maldives National Team along with a series of festivities planned to signal the inauguration of the Nawalapitiya Stadium in the confines of his cherished electorate. All well and good, if not for the catch and the lifeline that the FFSL panjandrums will gladly accept in order to prolong their stewardship in what is a failed sport.

Sports in sunny Sri Lanka
And so life goes on its merry way and so does sports in sunny Sri Lanka. The MOS extolled at the inauguration of the Asian Junior Athletics Secretariat, that all sportsmen and sports leaders must act wisely and faithfully in order to transform our standards and bring them on par with international levels before long. A nationwide survey is also being conducted calling on national associations to submit data and information so that a proper analysis can be done and appropriate actions instituted without delay.
This column has long encouraged the creation of a web portal that may encapsulate the plans and aspirations of all sports bodies. This expectation has still not seen the light of day and would seem a long way off, if one were to visit the MOS website which in itself is outdated and un-interactive.
It must be argued that it is not the role of the MOS to take over the running of each sport. It must certainly monitor its progress and establish the performance benchmarks so vital to ensure Sri Lanka is on an ascendency. But for sure, it must not introduce a vested interest as it has done with cricket, rugby and some other sports, most certainly with athletics where it had all but neutralised the association structure and instead resorted to interim appointments as a fast track to achieve the desired standards. Easier said than done, as it would realise because talent like most disciplines must be unfettered and depoliticised if it is to bloom and prosper.
World Cup Winning Captain Arjuna Ranatunga has called the IPL butchery; a denigration his brother will not concede. Captain-in-waiting Mathews like fashion icon Malinga seems to favour a rags-to-riches trajectory and why not, as there are many good examples. The new Rugby Chief has demonstrated to Caltex that the goodwill of a mere Rs. 450 m spent over 12 years in the guise of pure charity was not good enough to maintain the marriage vows for today’s dire  needs.
One of Sri Lanka’s top football clubs threatens to take FFSL to court. One man has almost singlehandedly secured a badminton world ranking so as to enter the Olympics as Sri Lanka’s lone aspirant. A learned professor has explained how the system works, which would have enabled our women badminton players to stake a similar claim.
Many others are in the throes of national and international representation valiantly struggling against odds to find a place in the sun. There are indeed a whole gamut of such matters that the MOS need to look into and bring its organisation framework to bear on as it works its mantra from the grassroots to the pedestals.
A cleanup is a good place to start for the MOS so long as it does not soil its hands in the process. It must realise that cleaning up is a daily ritual and not left to political whims and fancies. If it fails to do that cleaning up, then decay and decadence sets in and ruins irretrievably all that we have diligently sought to achieve and sustain. Good to see that the MOS rocks!