Former vice president K. Mathivanan camp’s last minute withdrawal from the Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) election has underlined many important points. First and foremost, Mathivanan, and dozens of other people like him, need to understand that even as they have been keep shouting for decades now to bring a change, not a single stakeholder trust on them. Second, by withdrawing from the election, they have betrayed all those, who stood for them.
As it was widely expected, Yesterday, two days before scheduled SLC election, Mathivanan camp backed out from the race of the Maitland Place! It was a move, anticipated by majority of people in Sri Lanka cricket months ago. Cricket Age had published on May 10 itself that as Mathivanan camp’s election campaign 2021 was punctured by political pressure, they are looking the options for a respectable exit!
In February, in the lead up to the election, the battle to conquer the Maitland Place had become a high profile affair, when Mathivanan formed an opposition, comprising of Sri Lanka’s first test captain Bandula Warnapura and former board secretary Nishantha Ranatunga. They called themselves as ‘Big Three’ and emphasized on developing the game and bringing back the glory! It followed by a series of press conferences, proposals to arrest the slide of the game in the Island, and vision presentations.
Yesterday, after making all the meaningless noise, they surrendered!
“Sri Lanka Cricket now languishes at the bottom of the ICC rankings in all three formats of the game, not least due to the maladministration and chicanery of its incumbent office bearers,” they gave a lame excuse in a letter to the Elections Commission.
However, as they have backed out now, all these BIG TALKINGS ABOUT SO CALLED OVERHAUL seems hollow! They surrendered so meekly, that they couldn’t point finger towards backdated gazette notification issue even!
They didn’t accept even that competing Shammi Silva camp in the election was never their agenda! Instead, they were relying on exploiting the shortcomings of ousted board president’s previous tenure! They tried desperatley to exploit these issues. However, 99.9% stakeholders refused to show trust in their claims, whether those claims were right or wrong! Forget stakeholders, even Mahela Jayawardene, latest flag bearer of Sri Lanka cricket, didn’t show faith in their claims, as he openly recommended his club SSC to support Shammi Silva and Co.
The withdrawal of Mathivanan camp underlined another important fact: Politically powerful Nishantha Ranatunga was defeated by a non-political Shammi Silva, that too during an all Rajapaksa’s government!
The biggest loser is undoubtedly Mathivanan. Most likely, he will be forgotten forever now, as he has lost the trust of all those who backed him! No logic in wasting more time on those self-claims that whether he is honest or not. The bottom line is, he couldn’t win even 10 clubs trust! For his next phase of life, he need to understand a simple fact that if you can’t finish the race, don’t start the race!
