Ye of Little Faith…

Lasith Malinga plays cricket for himself. Let’s get that straight. He’s not playing for you or me, regardless of how much you may want to believe that he is out there representing your couch potato backside.

Mali is untameable. He will respect those who respect him, and will not give a shit about those that don’t. Whoever they may be, and honestly – I love that about him. Yesterday’s performance was a giant up yours to a lot of people who had written him off. And despite the whingeing and moaning, all of Sri Lanka is ready to embrace him today, in typically fickle fashion.

Lasith Malinga is a proud player. And more than anyone else since Murali, has won matches for Sri Lanka on the field. He may not be the debonair ambassador off the field, but on the field he has been our most valuable player since Murali’s high profile retirement. With them both bowling in tandem we were almost unstoppable. It is unfortunate though that despite this, the Sri Lankan public were so quick to turn their backs on him.

The real villains of the Malinga piece are SLC. In Malinga’s opinion, they dicked him around and at one point, ridiculously, asked him to cut his hair, too. He’s the sort of player who knows he’s good enough not to have to take that crap, to be treated with some sort of dignity, or else he’ll go where he can get more money and chill. Like the IPL. Can’t be helped. Players, whether it be at international level or any level are also human beings. Malinga telling SLC to ‘piss off’ is not any different from a disgruntled Havelocks player switching to CR or vice versa. At whatever level of sports, most sportspeople want to be left alone, paid on time, and allowed to play. It’s not really asking for much.

SLC has not done that, and the reason that many other players have stuck around and taken SLC’s crap, is because they didn’t really have an alternative. None of our other players are superstars in the Lasith Malinga sense. Even Sanga is not as valuable to an IPL franchise as Lasith is. He had options, he exercised them, just like you or I would if our bosses were assholes.

Again we Sri Lankans held him to a higher standard than we hold our politicians, who have some sense of fiduciary duty towards us and hold public trust. But we are not nearly so angry at some political shenanigans as we are when Lasith doesn’t bowl well.

Yesterday he roared back to form. And underscored his worth as one of the few match winners in this Sri Lankan side. As a nation, everyone loves him again, until he chooses to stand up for himself. Perhaps our ire at his ability to do so, is our sometimes inescapable inability to do so, and to position ourselves in such a manner as to not have to bow down to any rubbish we may have dished out from friends, colleagues, bosses, parents or spouses. We need to be inspired by Lasith Malinga the human being. Not only entertained by his bowling.