Greatness in sports is often measured in the number and margins of
victory. Domination of a discipline or a
sport over a long period of time naturally wins accolades. Sports, after all, is mostly about winning.
And yet, not everything that stands out for standing ovation has to do with
besting the opposition. Sometimes it is
rising to the occasion to the point that you rise above yourself and your
self-interest. This is why ‘The Nation’
picks Dinesh Chandimal as the Sporting Personality of the Year 2014.
On that day in Dhaka there couldn’t have been any Sri Lankan
without a smile. There couldn’t have
been many Sri Lankans anywhere in the world following the World T-20 final who
is did not smile at that particular moment when Sri Lanka defeated India to win
ICC silverware after 18 long years. The
entire team had broad grins. The officials too. And yet, one smile was
special. It belonged to someone who
didn’t take the field. Dinesh Chandimal.
There was a report that Chandimal wept when he heard he was
dropped for the Semi-Final against the West Indies (he had been docked for the
game against New Zealand due to a slow over-rate). We don’t know if this is true. It is never a happy thing to be dropped. It is probably worse not to be picked at all
(ask Marvan Atapattu, he has booked the defining chapter on ‘The Book of Drops’
if and when it gets written). It was not
that Chandimal was not picked.
It was not that he was dropped (he could have, so we are
told, insisted on playing and that would have been it). What is ‘special’ about
it all is that he was the designated captain of the team that went on to win
the Championship. And he, the captain,
was dropped! ‘Devastating’ doesn’t
quite describe what he probably would have felt.
The man was woefully out of form and as Lasitha Malinga’s
short and successful ‘captaining’ experience showed, a team that already had
four skippers (Mahela Jayawardena, Kumar Sangakkara, Tillekeratne Dilshan and
Angelo Matthews) didn’t really have to worry about him being dropped. As someone pointed out, there was the
‘National Captain’, Lasith Malinga, and there was the ‘Leadership Council’ made
of the aforementioned skippers. Mahela
led the leaders, it was pretty obvious.
What is beautiful about it all is that it was an issue for
everyone except for Sri Lankans. It is
hard to think that the press of any country would not have raised a lot of
questions if a designated captain abdicated for all intents and purposes in
favor of one the men he is supposed to be leading. For Sri Lankans, apart from a few wry jokes,
it was as it should be. Logical to the last letter.
Still.
Still there’s the small issue of a young man who had been
appointed captain and had to lead players who had a dozen years’ worth of
experience more than he did. There’s the
small issue of having left Sri Lanka as captain and having to watch the final
from the dressing room. There’s also the
small issue of Dinesh Chandimal running around the ground after Sri Lanka won
the match, carrying the man who put the final touches to the campaign on his
shoulders. Dinesh Chandimal helped hold
Kumar Sangakkara high. He couldn’t stop
smiling a schoolboyish smile. That
delight was unadulterated. That admiration was unadulterated. And in this, there was as much ‘team,’
‘team-spirit,’ and ‘leadership’ than anything we were privileged to watch
unfold out there in the middle of the ground.
There was courage on the part of the selectors, that unhappy,
ready to be maligned tribe; for they dropped the captain. Had Sri Lanka lost,
someone might have said ‘you can’t win a match after dropping the skipper’. Someone else might have said, ‘why did you
pick him in the first place?’ A third
might say ‘were you crazy to make him captain?’
Sanath was bold. Chandimal was humble.
Now that’s a World Cup story right there. In some strange, round-about way, therein
lies a gene-fact of a team-corporeality that helped bring the World Cup to Sri
Lanka. We didn’t have a single stand-out
player in this tournament (as opposed to the previous two editions). We do best, perhaps, when we do it
together. Dinesh Chandimal did his part
and did it well. With utmost grace. Take a bow, Chandimal