Malinda Words: Lalith Ratnayake

Adam Gilchrist 'walking' during the World Cup semi-final against Sri Lanka in 2003

‘Aevidda paya dahas vatee’ is a Sinhala saying that refers to the value of walking. Literally, it means, ‘feet that walk are worth thousands…’ Thousands of kahavanu or masurang we don’t know. If we talk in rupees, we would have to talk of hundreds of thousands or millions and not thousands considering inflation and of course the fuel crisis that crippled one and all.

Walking is good for many reasons, including of course fund-raising activities. But there’s another kind of walking. One associated with cricket. It refers to a batter who knows he/she is out (for, say, having nicked a delivery ever so faintly to the wicket keeper or slip cordon) and although appeals from fielders haven’t swayed the umpire nevertheless decides to walk back to the pavilion, outing him/herself, so to say.

Today with DRS and third umpires, the bowler, fielders and umpires have the opportunity to press the point home should they feel they are right. Today, as it was the case before the ICC pencilled in review options and the development of technology, there are no laws that say you can’t wait for the umpire’s decision. Doesn’t mean batters cannot walk though. Some still do, still.

What’s important is that it is a moral rather than legal issue. Anthony McGowan explores the moral prerogatives in a wonderful article titled ‘The ethics of walking in cricket: from Socrates to Nietzsche’ in www.theguardian.com published in December 2019.

Based on the ideological or even philosophical predilections of well known Western historical figures who made morality, among other things, their concern, McGowan speculates on whether or not each would walk. Here’s the gist.

‘Socrates would have walked. Plato would have too, if he hadn’t got rid of cricket altogether. The next is hilarious: Diogenes the Cynic ‘would have marched out to the wicket and defecated on the pitch, just short of a good length. Epicurus would have walked and advocated walking to boot. Aristippus and the Cyrenaics would say ‘do not walk, just enjoy your time out there.’ Pyrrho of Elis and the Skeptics who insisted that nothing is certain would not have walked. Stoics, trusting fate and convinced that if the umpire hasn’t given it then it must be the right decision, would not walk. Aristotle would have walked but only if he was sure that the umpire was about to give him out; otherwise he would stand his ground. Kant, who believed that fellow crickets are owed the truth would have walked. The Utilitarian does not walk for there’s no utility value in doing so. Nietzsche would not have walked.’

There you have it. The particular batter will think through the dilemma as per the moral tenets he/she subscribes to. Judgment on the act (of walking or not) will likewise be informed by the morality each ‘judge’ has embraced. So ‘walkers’ would be applauded by some and vilified by others. All very subjective.

There are two instances that come to mind. Feel free to judge, to applaud or condemn.

During the 97th Battle of the Blues, in 1976, the entire Royal team appealed for a caught-behind down the leg side and the umpire ruled Lalith Ratnyake out. The batsman had been shocked and it showed on his face. He just shook his head and walked back. The umpire’s decision was final and respected. That was the sportsman’s creed back then.

The reaction was not lost on the Royal skipper, T M S Saldin. He conferred with his teammates and requested the umpire to call Ratnayake back. Many claim that Saldin knew enough of Ratnayake to understand that he would not feign disbelief at the dismissal. Many claim that had it been any other Thomian, Saldin would not have bothered to ‘review’ with his teammates.

A few years later, in 1982, the Royal veggie Malik Samarasinghe had enticed Stefan Anthonisz offer the faintest of an edge, so faint that only the keeper, Sarinda Unamboowe had appealed. The umpire declined the appeal.

Anthonisz stood firm for a few seconds looking at the ground. Then he turned, looked Sarinda in the eye, and as Sarinda later recalled, ‘muttered an audible obscenity and to the shock of all, on and off the field, tucked his bat under his arm and trudged off the field.’

All the Royalists on the field, once they realized what had happened, had applauded Anthonisz all the way to the pavilion. There may have been some Cyrenaics, Stoics, Aristotlians and Utilitarians in the Thomian camp who would have been scornful.

Sarinda, it is reported, had made a beeline for the Thomian dressing room at the tea break to shake Stefan’s hand and to confess, ‘I would never have done that.’

Two examples, then, of a different kind of aevidda paya, feet that walked. Feet that walked the talk, in fact; the talk of the done thing being done. The one where perceptions of an individual’s integrity persuaded a decision-review and a decision-reversal; a walk back associated with certain moral convictions; and the other a walk praised and perhaps scorned. Feel free to judge, to applaud or condemn.

Both matches ended in draws. Had there been decisions in either match, the significance of these small acts may have been assessed differently and different values attached to each.

Suffice to say that Anthonisz, Ratnayake and Saldin are remembered more often than whoever excelled with bat or ball. All things considered, these walks were pure gold forged in the alchemy of moral consideration. Intangible and yet highly valued.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

Other articles in this series:

Sarinda's eyes

Poetry and poets will not be buried

Sunny Dayananda

Reunion Peradeniya (1980-1990)

What makes Oxygen breathable?

Sorrowing and delighting the world

The greatest fallacy

Encounters with Liyanage Amarakeerthi

Beyond praise and blame

Letters that cut and heal the heart

Vanished and vanishing trails

Blue-blueness

A forgotten dawn song from Embilipitiya

The soft rain of neighbourliness

The Gold Medals of being

Jaya Sri Ratna Sri

All those we've loved before

Reflections on waves and markings

A chorus of National Anthems

Saying what and how

'Say when'

Respond to insults in line with the Akkosa Sutra

The loves of our lives

The right time, the right person

The silent equivalent of a thousand words

Crazy cousins are besties for life

Unities, free and endearing

Free verse and the return key

"Sorry, Earth!"

The lost lyrics of Premakeerthi de Alwis

The revolution is the song

Consolation prizes in competitions no one ever wins

The day I won a Pulitzer

Ko?

Ella Deloria's silences

Blackness, whiteness and black-whiteness

Inscriptions: stubborn and erasable

Thursday!

Deveni: a priceless one-word koan

Enlightening geometries

Let's meet at 'The Commons'

It all begins with a dot

Recovering run-on lines and lost punctuation

'Wetness' is not the preserve of the Dry Zone

On sweeping close to one's feet

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California

To be an island like the Roberts...

Debts that can never be repaid in full

An island which no flood can overwhelm

Who really wrote 'Mother'?

A melody faint and yet not beyond hearing

Heart dances that cannot be choreographed

Remembering to forget and forgetting to remember

On loving, always

Authors are assassinated, readers are immortal

When you turn 80...

It is good to be conscious of nudities

Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday

There's a one in a million and a one in ten

Gunadasa Kapuge is calling

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California

Hemantha Gunawardena's signature

Pathways missed

Architectures of the demolished

The exotic lunacy of parting gifts

Who the heck do you think I am?

Those fascinating 'Chitra Katha'

The Mangala Sabhava

So how are things in Sri Lanka?

The most beautiful father

Palmam qui meruit ferat

The sweetest three-letter poem

Buddhangala Kamatahan

An Irish and Sri Lankan Hello

Teams, team-thinking, team-spirit and leadership

The songs we could sing in lifeboats when we are shipwrecked

Pure-Rathna, a class act

Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna

Awaiting arrivals unlike any other

Teachers and students sometimes reverse roles

Matters of honor and dignity

Yet another Mother's Day

A cockroach named 'Don't'

Colombo, Colombo, Colombo and so forth

The slowest road to Kumarigama, Ampara

Sweeping the clutter away

Some play music, others listen

Completing unfinished texts

Mind and hearts, loquacious and taciturn

I am at Jaga Food, where are you?

On separating the missing from the disappeared

Moments without tenses

And intangible republics will save the day (as they always have)

The world is made of waves

'Sentinelity'

The circuitous logic of Tony Muller

Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya'

Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist

Figures and disfigurement, rocks and roses

Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced

Some stories are written on the covers themselves

A poetic enclave in the Republic of Literature

Landcapes of gone-time and going-time

The best insurance against the loud and repeated lie

So what if the best flutes will not go to the best flautists?

There's dust and words awaiting us at crossroads and crosswords

The books of disquiet

A song of terraced paddy fields

Of ants, bridges and possibilities

From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva

World's End

Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse

Street corner stories

Who did not listen, who's not listening still?

The book of layering

If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain

The world is made for re-colouring

The gift and yoke of bastardy

The 'English Smile'

No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5

Visual cartographers and cartography

Ithaca from a long ago and right now

Lessons written in invisible ink

The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness'

A tea-maker story seldom told

On academic activism

The interchangeability of light and darkness

Back to TRADITIONAL rice

Sisterhood: moments, just moments

Chess is my life and perhaps your too

Reflections on ownership and belonging

The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha

Signatures in the seasons of love

To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows

Sirith, like pirith, persist

Fragrances that will not be bottled

Colours and textures of living heritage

Countries of the past, present and future

A degree in creative excuses

Books launched and not-yet-launched

The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains

The ways of the lotus

Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace

The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville

Live and tell the tale as you will

Between struggle and cooperation

Of love and other intangibles

Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions

The universe of smallness

Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers

Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills

Serendipitous amber rules the world

Continents of the heart

The allegory of the slow road

Adam Gilchrist walked in the 2003 World Cup semi-final
but 'walking' is not the only 'done thing' that's rarely done

When batsmen nick and and are caught behind, typically they wait for the umpire's decision. When it's just a shave, the decision is not easy. Some batsmen walk. In other words, they know they've nicked it, they know they are out and they walk. That's so rare that such batsmen receive a lot of praise for it's a 'done thing' that's strangely rarely done.

In the Royal-Thomian encounter of 1976, the entire Royal team appealed for a 'caught-behind' down the leg side. The umpire immediately raised his finger to the disbelief of the batsman, the late Lalith Ratnayake. A collective write-up by the Thomian teams from 1975-1977 describes the incident thus:

'The batsman appeared clearly shocked, as the ball had only grazed his shirt on the way to the wicket keeper. He instinctively shook his head and made his way back to the pavilion with his head down like a true sportsman. His reaction was enough for the Royal captain, Saldin, to think twice. Had the batsman been any of the 10 other Thomians in the team, Saldin would probably not have even considered doing what he did. After a quick "conference" with his teammates he requested the umpires to call the batsman back. Saldin and all his team mates were certain that the batsman concerned would never have reacted the way he did if he was in fact out.'

Another 'done thing' that's rarely done. Let it be noted that in that 97th annual Big Match between the schools, STC had Royal on the ropes. Let it also be noted that this was long before we got the Decision Review System and Hot-Spot.

Now cricket is supposed to be a gentlemen’s game. Golf enthusiasts might say that their’s is the gentlemen’s game. Rugger enthusiasts will quip, as they often have, ‘cricket is a gentlemen’s game played by rowdies, rugger is a rowdies’ game played by gentlemen.’

Who is a gentleman though, and what of ladies? A radical priest by the name of John Ball, who travelled the length of England in the late 14th Century, stirring up the peasant class in a revolt against their feudal landowners and who was incarcerated and possibly excommunicated for his efforts, asked the question thus: ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’

It is pretty arbitrary and a self-label rather than the product of general agreement. It is no coincidence and there’s nothing innocent about the fact that we are conditioned to believe that those who are wealthy, are ‘polished in their ways’ and are well dressed can do no wrong.

And yet, the greatest crimes against humanity have been commissioned or perpetrated by the so called gentlemen and ladies of this world. They get away with it more often than not, simply because they are products of and also produce a system of privilege where they are the principal beneficiaries.

Nevertheless, we often here people exclaim (at times shaking their heads to emphasize), ‘that’s not done!’ They say ‘bad show.’ They also say ‘not something one expects from a gentleman (or a lady as the case may be)’.

The truth is that those in privileged positions in structure of power can and do indulge in hanky-panky. They do the ‘not done’ things. Their foibles and even crimes go unseen for a certain kind of dress, a certain kind of bearing and certain trappings help make their wrongdoing invisible or else, simply, go uncensured.

A certain ‘lady’ who waves her so-called aristocratic lineage and has made condescension a trademark in her uttering recently responded to a comment on Facebook in this way: ‘I heard you were a school teacher. If so I pity your students. I have read the asinine comments you make on social media, dear headless lady. Don’t you think it’s best you remain silent and be thought a fool than open it (she probably meant ‘mouth’ here) and remove all doubt?’

The ‘lady’ has a point. One says something and in saying one describes oneself. Who has been more caustic here? Who comments are more asinine? Some might say that the author of the above comment has clearly described herself and in fact has painted herself in a manner far more grotesque than the person she’s dishing out advice to, whereas her cheering squad might insist that she did ‘the done thing.’

It is easy to get lost in the relativism of it all and descend to a point where ‘anything goes.’ The problem is that this world is already toxic and doesn’t need additional poisons.

We just can’t stop people who wish to be nasty. There are ways around the relevant laws which make for decent social intercourse. It is hard to legislate against a determined and caustic mind.

When someone tweets something that is clearly unwholesome and can (and has!) cause(d) a rift among cricketers, there’s very little one can do to repair the damage. The important thing to remember is that you have to find a way of insulating yourself from such distractions. That could be the ‘done thing’ relevant to the circumstances. ‘Let the dogs bark the caravan moves on,’ one can tell oneself. following the old Arabic proverb which finds resonance in many languages.

In other words, ladies and gentlemen, a lady or a gentleman is recognized less by the particular curriculum vitae but what’s said and done. That’s where we encounter ‘the done thing’ that is of value. That’s where we discover ladies and gentlemen and where uncivilized rogues reveal themselves. In other words the more important ‘done thing’ gets done, and true ladies and gentlemen begin to stand out in a multitude made of the sophomoric.

OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES [THE INTERCEPTION] PUBLISHED IN 'THE SUNDAY MORNING'

'Practice, lots of practice'

Special, always and forever

The shortcut to greatness

It's healthy to retire the braggadocio

Money talks, gold rules: are we ok with that?

Sometimes if you don't stand up, you fall

Selections and the political economy of disappointment

So who is the GOAT?

Predecessors are great teachers

When things go wrong check the fundamentals

There's always only one more game left