Sri Lanka on the verge of a selection committee shake-up
A little over four months after winning the Asia Cup, Sri Lanka are on the verge of a selection committee shake-up and its chief Pramodya Wickramasinghe is likely to be among the first names on the chopping block.
Wickramasinghe has headed the selection committee since April 2021, overseeing a youth-driven overhaul of Sri Lanka’s limited overs squads. This has seen seniors such as Angelo Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal and Dimuth Karunaratne, cut from the white-ball sides. Under Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka adopted a less reactionary approach to the selection process.
In this time, with Mickey Arthur and now Chris Silverwood as head coach, the national side has seen varying degrees of success, most notably home ODI series wins against South Africa and Australia and an Asia Cup T20 triumph. But despite this, a limp showing in the T20 World Cup followed by chastening white-ball losses away to India at the start of 2023, has brought the role of the selectors under the spotlight.
To fully comprehend the current state of Sri Lankan cricketing affairs, a slightly wider outlook on the landscape is required – starting with the appointment of new sports minister Roshan Ranasinghe in May 2022 who succeeded Namal Rajapaksa, the nephew of then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Gotabaya was eventually forced to resign following wide-scale protests in the country amidst a severe economic crisis, which also set in motion Namal’s ouster from the role of sports minister.
Among Ranasinghe’s first acts as sports minister was to appoint former Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga to head a 15-member National Sports Council (NSC), tasked with advising the sports minister on sports-related matters in the country.
Ranatunga has long been a vocal critic of Sri Lanka Cricket’s executive committee headed by president Shammi Silva, and following the team’s subpar T20 World Cup performance, he wasted little time in calling for the selectors to be replaced.
Wickramasinghe defended himself in an interview with Sri Lankan newspaper the Sunday Times earlier this month, asking: “We are number three in the ICC Test Championship points table. Clinched the country’s first major title in eight years, the Asia Cup, and then earned direct qualifications to the T20 World Cup in 2024. In ODIs we won a series against Australia. Aren’t these results of our efforts during the last 18 months?”
It seems that the SLC is inclined to agree with Wickramasinghe, but they aren’t the ones seeking to shift out the selectors. That’s the work of the sports ministry-appointed National Sports Selection Committee (NSSC).
In Sri Lanka, sports law mandates that national team selectors be appointed by the sports minister, so much so that even the squads they pick must first get sports ministry approval prior to being ratified. And in October 2022, the NSSC – a seven-member committee headed by Sri Lanka’s Chief of Defence Staff General Shavendra Silva and including former chairman of selectors Sanath Jayasuriya – was appointed with the task of giving final approval to sports selection in the country.
Earlier this month, the SLC sent the NSSC a set of 10 names, including Wickramasinghe’s, from which to pick the new selection committee. However the NSSC, without rejecting them outright, expressed dissatisfaction and requested an updated list be sent. The NSSC are set to meet on Monday (January 30) to make a final decision.
Political influence on cricketing matters is not unusual in Sri Lanka, with its post-1996 World Cup history punctuated by a series of interim committees, upheaval in selectors and selection, and shifts in captaincy. (cricinfo)
