A little more than four months after hosting the Asian Cup, Sri Lanka is on the brink of a reorganization of its selection committee, whose boss Pramodya Wickramasinghe could be one of the first names on the chopping block. there is.
Wickramasinghe has been chairing the selection committee since April 2021 and is overseeing a youth-led overhaul of a limited team in Sri Lanka. This left senior players such as Angelo Matthews, Dinesh Chandimal and Dimus Karnaratne out of the whiteball side. Under Wickramasinghe, Sri Lanka took a less reactionary approach to the selection process.
During that time, with Mickey Arthur and now Chris Silverwood as head coaches, the national team has had mixed success. Most notably, home wins over South Africa and Australia in his ODI series and winning the Asian Cup T20. 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. Wickremesinghe defended himself in an interview with Sri Lanka’s Sunday Times earlier this month.
“We are 3rd in the points table of the ICC Test Championship. We have won our first major title in eight years at the Asian Cup and will go straight to the T20 World Championship in 2024. At the ODIs, we won the series against Australia. Aren’t these the results of our efforts over the past 18 months?”
SLC he seems inclined to agree with Wickramasinghe, but he’s not SLC trying to push the selectors. That is the job of the National Sports Selection Committee (NSSC) set up by the Ministry of Sports. In Sri Lanka, the Sports Law stipulates that the selection of the national team is to be appointed by the Minister of Sports, so even an elected team must first be approved by the Ministry of Sports before it can be approved. . And in October 2022, the NSSC (a seven-member committee headed by his General Shavendra Silva, Chief of the Sri Lanka Defense Chief of Staff and former Selectors Chairman Sanath Jayasuriya) announced that the country’s sports selection was tasked with giving final approval to the .
Earlier this month, SLC sent his NSSC a list of his 10 names, including Wickramasinguez, from which to select a new selection committee. However, the NSSC expressed its dissatisfaction without direct refusal and requested an updated list be sent. The NSSC will meet on Monday (January 30th) to make a final decision. Political ramifications in cricket affairs are not uncommon in Sri Lanka, as the 1996 World Cup was punctuated by a series of interim commissions, selector and selection confusion, and captain changes following the 1996 World Cup.