Madushka Balasuriya
Jul 31, 2024, 03:31 PM ET
If you're a keen follower of Sri Lankan cricket, hell even an occasional one, the last couple of days have been a doozy. The go-to descriptor would be emotional rollercoaster, but that doesn't seem to quite cut it.
No, this has been the emotional equivalent of being jettisoned from an aircraft only to have your parachute not work and somehow get the backup working moments before near certain death, and then be mauled by a pack of lions upon landing unharmed on the ground. Fear, excitement, relief, unbridled joy and then utter defeat. And worse still, while that analogy would result in the sweet release of death, we still have to continue watching Sri Lankan cricket.
This, though, is not another opinion piece to add to the inevitable pile-on. Just this past month, Firdose Moonda published an exhaustive piece on the abuse players suffer, even in the wake of marginal defeats, let alone the sort of soul-crushing capitulations the men's Sri Lankan cricket team have faced over the past few days.
Suffice to say, the players know that their efforts have not been good enough, and after a certain point, there will be diminishing marginal returns on any criticism that comes their way. Even the success of the women's team, one that ought to go down in their history as one of the greatest ever cricketing achievements, has been widely used as a stick to beat the men with.
But while that comparison has largely been used as a throwaway gag, perhaps there's something there worth diving deeper into. It wasn't long ago that the women's side were in a far more dire situation than they are now, with the sole shining light being Chamari Athapaththu. However, over the past year, the team as a whole have managed to shed any inhibitions they might have harboured about their abilities, and in the process strung together a series of results that have marked them out as one of the most in-form teams in the world currently.
As fate would have it, the very same set of circ*mstances that have played a role in keeping this women's side, and women's cricket in Sri Lanka in general, from flourishing, might have in fact also played in their favour.
A lack of depth for one which is something that needs to be addressed promptly - particularly if recent successes are to be carried forward - has also meant that selectors have had no choice but to stick with underperforming players. They were, simply put, the best available at the time. But over the past year, even if not by design, the women's team have come out the other end of a dysfunctional, some would say broken system, with net gains no one could have predicted.
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This, to be clear, is by no means an attempt to take away from the hard work and effort put in by the players, nor the coach and support staff that have worked tirelessly to bring them up to the level they currently sit happily on. But to recognise the fact that this is a side that has been given room to make mistakes, build camaraderie, and grow together in a way few other teams - men or women - might have been, albeit only because they were never a priority with a cricket board preoccupied by the men's team.
That men's team, meanwhile, despite having been provided superior resources and training, have been subjected to pressure from all quarters. Social media is frequently ablaze with memes and mockery after each defeat, all while comparisons are made to the glory years of the team's past - the same teams, mind, that only had to deal with a fraction of the pressures brought on by the advent of social media.
It's an easy out to point to intangibles such as desire, or speculate that players might have taken their eye off the ball due to the extra money in the game, or that they lack discipline because they enjoy the fruits of their wealth. But this champion India side are amongst the most well-remunerated in the game; such arguments just don't fly.
The fact is, if two sides, working within the same dysfunctional system, can have such differing results and mindsets, it's only fair to look at the variables in play.
Is there something to be learned here, something that can be bottled up and poured over the men's side, so that similar fearlessness and clarity of mind - so gloriously exhibited by the women - can be unlocked within them?
After all, Sri Lanka's greatest ever success, in 1996, was when expectations were at their lowest. And ever since, this is a nation that has thrived in the role of underdogs. But when expectations aren't managed, neither are the reactions to adverse results.
It's worth asking what if the roles were reversed?
What if the growing pains this women's side had to endure had taken place under the same media glare that the men's team face regularly?
Would these players have flourished as they have if their positions in the national squad were a part of regular post-game discourse?
Would the efforts to instil confidence and self-belief in them by their coaches have stuck, if each time they opened social media they were bombarded with criticism?
All valid questions, all quite impossible to answer definitively, though certainly worth pondering.
Rumesh Ratnayake, the women's head coach, has spoken about how important reframing and language can be in dispelling a negative mindset. Let's take even these most recent defeats to India in the men's T20Is. They were scarcely ever discussed for what they were. In the first two games, those colossal collapses were borne out of a desire to attack and capitalise on the death overs; the intent was there, the execution was not. When such planning comes off it's lauded, but in failure, there is no room for nuance.
And this isn't something as new-age as even Bazball, this is simply Sri Lanka trying to catch up to where several sides already reside. It was only in the final game on Tuesday wherein a collapse worthy of the moniker occurred, but by then - like the choker tag that so plagues South Africa - it was on the verge of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. The narrative was set, those watching on had bought into it, and seemingly so had the players. What happened next, everyone knows.
And while it is indisputable that India struggle with the glare of media more than any other side in world cricket, they have had generations of practice in effectively insulating players from public and media backlash.
In that sense, is it so unreasonable that the Sri Lankan players are struggling to deal with something that we can all agree is not ideal, even if inevitable? Because as the women's side have sadly highlighted, even a complete lack of discourse is sometimes better than a pile-on.
