{"id":42422,"date":"2015-03-18T04:16:47","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T11:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=42422"},"modified":"2015-03-18T04:16:47","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T11:16:47","slug":"sri-lankan-cricket-down-to-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/03\/18\/sri-lankan-cricket-down-to-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"SRI LANKAN CRICKET – DOWN TO EARTH"},"content":{"rendered":"

By M D P DISSANAYAKE<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

In 1996 when Sri Lanka won the World Cup, almost all our players were financially poor. Some players came to Australia with broken shoes.\u00a0\u00a0 Not many of them had the glory as top class cricketers.\u00a0\u00a0 They had a hunger to be the world best, just like Bangladesh today.<\/strong>\u00a0 But today Sri Lankan cricketers are\u00a0 mostly rich businessmen play the game to enhance the Goodwill of their private businesses.\u00a0 Its a prestige to call that ”\u00a0 This is my Crab Ministry”,\u00a0\u00a0 ” This is my new Entertainment Paradise”,\u00a0 “This is my Hotel”.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Was there an effective curfew for Sri Lankan players in Melbourne? The most celebrated high profie Sri Lankan batsman was\u00a0 selling his\u00a0 old Bat in an\u00a0 Auction in Melbourne for\u00a0 AUD 12,000\u00a0 and the other most Senior Batsman who did not contribute much with\u00a0 his current bat, sold his old Bat for AUD 8,000.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The photo shooting with families of these Great Sri Lankans, late night parties, provided no stamina for them to face South African, let alone Scotland in a sudden death shoot out. Continuation with Tissara Perara was a dead loss.\u00a0 He was no where near an all rounder.<\/p>\n

Sri Lankan fans have spent thousands of Dollars to cheer our team and the country, travelled from Melbourne to Sydney Cricket Ground, but our Rich and Proud Team let us down.<\/p>\n

We always wanted unity within the team.\u00a0 Chaminda Vass exposed his anger in public, perhaps he must be a happy man now.<\/p>\n

Lets get rid of Ministry of Crabs, Hotels, Entertainment Centres, but involve a team similar to 1996.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Sanath has failed, Arjuna should be back on the saddle!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By M D P DISSANAYAKE In 1996 when Sri Lanka won the World Cup, almost all our players were financially poor. Some players came to Australia with broken shoes.\u00a0\u00a0 Not many of them had the glory as top class cricketers.\u00a0\u00a0 They had a hunger to be the world best, just like Bangladesh today.\u00a0 But today […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-m-d-p-dissanayake"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}