While cricket officials have been assured of an eternal existence, the whipping boy of Sri Lanka cricket Dinesh Chandimal can see himself the first casualty in the maiden act of the new team Selection Committee while the current oldest surviving player Angelo Matthews has been brought back after nearly three years at age 36.
Now aged 34, Chandimal is not part of the ODI or T20 squads selected for the home series against Zimbabwe and has never had a fair run during a 12-year career while Matthews last played in a T20 International in March 2021 and the two who formed a bonded friendship during their playing days together now find themselves on opposite sides of the fence.
Both players are victims and beneficiaries of a contradictory formula formulated by the new team Selection Committee headed by Upul Tharanga who at their maiden task declared that their predecessor Pramodya Wickremasinghe’s stance to groom youngsters for the future was the result of a bad administration that laid down no policy to go by.
Tharanga made it clear that as long as Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) does not lay down a player Selection policy he will have it his own sweet way and pick players to suit the whims and fancies of his Committee, right or wrong.
“Chandimal is not in a position to come and bat at Number 5 or 4 as Sadeera Samarawickrema and Charith Asalanka are playing well and that’s why we had to leave him (Chandimal) out,” said Tharanga.
But favouring the return of Matthews into the T20 squad, Tharanga contends going in for an all out young player surge will not work and player-experience forms the core of the team.
“We will not adopt a young-player policy,” said Tharanga. “We need experience players and if they are fit and playing well they should be in the team. Young players can learn from the presence of older players.”
In the absence of what has been touted as a policy for player selections, Tharanga and his co-selectors will be able to side-step the critics and scribes and Chandimal and many others after him will have to depend on luck.
As a schoolboy batter for Dharmasoka College Ambalangoda and later Ananda College in Colombo, Chandimal with his belligerent stroke-play used to excite Press reporters some of whom spread the word that a new kid was in the making for Sri Lanka and the unassuming soft-spoken lad did not disappoint.
By the time he became a victim of circumstances and bad player-management Chandimal had clouted 14 Test hundreds and fell short of reaching a hundred on 25 other occasions to go with four centuries and 24 half tons in ODI cricket.
Statistically, one of the ODI hundreds was smashed against England at Lords on a tour in 2011 and when Sri Lanka notched up a first Test win on the fast bouncy South African tracks at Durban in 2011, Chandimal stood up against the likes of Dale Styen and potential finger breakers Morne Morkel and Jacques Kallis to make twin 50s in the match.
Not in any of the current Sri Lanka ODI and T20 squads, Chandimal will take his place in history as one of the most badly managed players and even a comeback may not be able to take away the raw deals and mismanagement of a cricketer who should have been a batsman unlike any other.
If cricket was cruel to any player, Chandimal fitted the bill. He was a true patriot who did not fall to temptations.
