Leading Edge: SA cricket could learn a few things by crossing Custom Street

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Galle

We were in the midst of the madness of crossing Custom Street when a man with a plan made us an offer he thought we could not refuse: “In through the main gate. Only 100.”

Around us swarmed buses, mini-buses, motorbikes, scooters, trucks, tuk-tuks, taxis, bicycles, parasoled, perambulating pedestrians, beggars, policemen as punctilious as they were paunchy, dogged dogs, catatonic cats, crotchety crows, and all. They came from at least 47 points of a three-pronged intersection, and they kept coming.

Behind us, 426 years of chiselled, towering, magnificent history called the Galle Fort sighed silently: it had gazed down on all this before.

In front of us, through a wire fence, we saw Billy Bowden walk a line as crooked as his finger to the middle of the ground. Bowden’s colleague, Richard Kettleborough, strode more straightly to the same destination. Together they were about to get another day going in the first test between Sri Lanka and SA.

The ground’s main gate was 250 metres away on a seriously sunny day. Entry to the match was free. If we did not need a ride and we did not need tickets, what was our man with a plan hoping to be paid 100 rupees to do?

We declined the offer and, having somehow survived crossing Custom Street, continued on our own sweaty steam. But questions hung in the warm, wet air: did we look gormless enough to buy free tickets or unfit enough to need transport for so short a journey? Or what?

Could it be that we stuck out as too obviously South African and therefore likely to be spooked into parting with cash to ward off the evil of anything that smacked of unorthodoxy - like passers-by being able to watch a test through a fence and, if they fancied it, pop in for an over or 90 without having to purchase a ticket.

Fine. That’s a reach. But SA’s cricket culture is hung up on orthodoxy in ways that Sri Lanka’s is not.

What would have happened, for instance, if Muttiah Muralitharan or Lasith Malinga had been South African? They would have been prescribed remedial coaching until their actions were straightened out and, probably, have lost what made them champion bowlers.

Conversely, if Hashim Amla had grown up in Sri Lanka he would still have his crooked backlift. We know he is a wonderful player who will add a pile of runs to the mountain he has already scored, but how do we know he would not have been an even better batsman if his backlift had not provoked dire disapproval from the orthodoxy police?

Sri Lankan cricket is far from perfect. The board allowed their debt to balloon to US$70-million before they tried to stop the bleeding, the players went unpaid for eight months of 2011, and the governance problems and politics in the game here make SA’s look like a Disney movie.

If Sri Lanka had the financial means to commercialise the soul out of the game as is happening in other countries, including SA, they would. Instead, they have unorthodox ideas. Like covering the entire field, not just the pitch area, each evening and laying foam rubber on the pitch under the cover to minimise sweating and maximise their spin advantage.

Lankans know when they are onto a good thing - or two trying to cross Custom Street.