Yesterday (that would be Thursday) I spent a few hours at
the 131st Battle
of the Blues. As always happens, one
runs into old friends, some who have not been seen in years or even decades.
There’s catching up, there’s chit chat, the occasional checking of score, dancing,
singing and drinking.
I knew I would meet Rajitha Dhanapala, friend from Grade 1A
and about whom I wrote a few weeks ago (how he was unfairly dropped from the
team, along with two others who constituted the top three batsmen in terms of
batting averages that season, Chandana Panditharatne and Assagi
Ranasinghe). Rajitha was laughing.
‘Machang, I got so many calls. Pandi called after 22
years! I even got calls from some
Thomian friends who wanted to know if you would write about similar things that
happened in their school.’
Now I know that such things happen in all schools, in all
sports and indeed in all places and all things where some form of selection
takes place. I wasn’t ready for
something that I heard yesterday though: ‘it happened this year too!’ What could I do or say but ‘oh well!’?
Got me thinking though.
I remembered L.D.H. Peiris. Remembered his deep voice introducing a
guest, a distinguished old boy, two of them in fact, way back in the year
1982. Ranjan Madugalle and Asantha De
Mel. The former captained Royal in the
99th and the Centenary Battles of the Blues, the latter was
‘imported’, people said, from Isipathana
College just for the
Centenary match (1979). They are both
well known names today, but back then their claim to fame was just the fact
that they were members of team that played Sri Lanka’s first test match
(against Keith Fletcher’s England team).
The Principal broke tradition. He had to. There were two old Royalists in that
team. It was only Ranjan who spoke and I
distinctly remember Asantha opting to ‘pass’ the invite to speak. Ranjan was then a young old boy and therefore
quite familiar. He wasn’t as
‘distinguished’ as other distinguished old boys we had previously listened to,
but that didn’t bother us. He was hero and later on did acquire distinction
that put him way up there among the ‘distinguished’ who lectured young
Royalists on certain mornings. He spoke
at length, but of all the things he said only one thing stuck in my mind.
‘Whenever I am out of form, getting out cheaply or to poor
shots, I revert to the fundamentals. I
go back to the nets. I check my stance. I check the back-lift. Things like that. Invariably, I start performing better. That is a life lesson. Whenever we go wrong,
it is good to ask yourself if you’ve got the fundamentals wrong. Basic things like discipline. Like
values. You will always find that that’s
where the problem lies. That is what
needs to be corrected.’
I am obviously paraphrasing and would humbly accept any correction
if Ranjan thinks I’ve done him injustice here.
Ranjan would have been about 23 or 24 at the time and these
words were indeed profound for someone so young. It is clear also that he has consistently
applied these principles to both his cricket and his career as a match
referee.
I remembered Ranjan because his is a lesson that is valid
not just for cricketers and schoolboys, but coaches, teachers-in-charge,
selectors and others involved in the game.
I am not sure if there was any wrong doing in team-selection this time
around, but I am sure it won’t hurt anyone to step back and check
‘fundamentals’ now and then.
In the matter of ‘selection’, it is a lesson that
politicians and party leaders can benefit from if they choose to reflect deep
on decisions made and processes adopted.
At what point does ‘procedure’ gets overruled by that dubious but
sometimes inevitable concept called ‘discretion’? Sometimes one does go with ‘gut-feeling’ but
do they pause and ask themselves if ‘gut-feeling’ is an alibi for
favouritism? What kind of fundamentals
are referenced during decision and in post-mortem? And are these principles referred to
selectively, i.e. at one’s convenience or worse for purposes of
justification?
I am thinking right now about party leaders, parties and the
committees tasked with making candidates’ lists for the upcoming parliamentary
elections. We are not living in Utopia
and therefore the insertion of celebrities can be understood and indeed it is
more an indictment of how voters think than about the intellectual paucity of
leaders. On the other hand, I think there is a thing called a ‘bottom line’, a
minimum standard that should not be violated.
Sad to say, in many cases, the ‘bottom line’ is right at the bottom,
meaning it cannot get worse.
What are the fundamentals pertaining to politicians? Manifesto, isn’t it? How many of the elected actually return to
the document they waved before the voter?
How many check if what they have done or are doing is consistent with the
pledges made? Do they ever go to the
larger ‘fundamental’ of representation and of course that of proper conduct,
which includes (or ought to include) things such as honestly, transparency and
accountability? Do they then check
constitution and observe lacuna with respect to these things and if they do
discover incongruence do they then work systematically and with utmost
dedication to correct error?
I think Ranjan Madugalle’s comment on returning to the
fundamentals is a timeless one. There’s no magic in it, except in the fact that
at a tender age he appeared to have learnt a lesson that few can claim to have
learnt by the time they reach 80 and one which many refuse to think about
because it would cause a lot of inconvenience.
It is timeless in that it is embedded in most religious
tenets and all societies have definite or loosely defined terms of reference
equivalent to the stance, back lift, the virtues of discipline, commitment,
fitness and practice.
I am not sure who lost out and who benefited from someone
refusing to be true to the fundamentals.
Life is long and can be quite an equalizer. Sometime it takes years and decades (ask
Rajitha Dhanapala, Chandana Panditharatne or Assagi Ranasinghe). It is easier and more fruitful overall to do
the right thing at the right time, if you really think about it. That boils down to another ‘fundamental’:
values. And it doesn’t matter if they are underwritten by notions of a supreme
being waiting to judge or notions of natural justice as in the paticcasamuppada, the principle of
dependent origination or some other ‘law’ drawn from other cosmologies.
These are hardly the things that come to mind or are talked
about during a ‘big match’ of course; but then again all human beings, thanks
to inherent frailties, tend to go wrong and that’s when the simple observation
made by Ranjan Madugalle almost three decades ago could show a pathway.
*First published in March/April 2011
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