Malinga and the so called Patriotism.

"Yes, Lasith Malinga, a former Indian fast bowler saw you playing cricket with a tennis ball, like all the other Indian kids, in an Indian town, and brought you to the Indian Cricket team, where you played cricket for India, and became famous among Indians who cheered at every wicket of yours and believed in you when you failed to deliver. Stay there, and don't EVER come back here"

An extract from a Facebook status about Malinga!

Before starting what I want to make sure is this wont be another blog where I am gonna bash Malinga for not taking up the contract!! Here I am just gonna discuss my views about this Malinga situation in a non sarcastic manner!!

Let me start the blog by introducing the ‘No need to introduce’ Malinga!! He is arguably the second best fast bowler Sri Lanka had ever produced (No one surpasses Vassey the great, Not even the Slinga himself), at least in the shorter formats of the sport! He has the pace, he has the accuracy, he has the temperament and he has it all to become a great fast bowler!! No one in the current cricketing world could bowl those Yorkers at will in that pace. Best death over bowler in the world. Period. All this time I have never seen some one taking Malingas bowling apart consistently (Barring Kohli, Seriously How the hell he did that to Malinga in Hobart).

But in life (or in that case even in the myths) all the gifts and powers do come with an Achilles heel. For Malinga it came in the version of ‘Fragile body’. If you say it in the local way this guy has a ‘Papadam’ body (A food item which crumbles easily)!! Fast bowler with a unique slingy action and a fragile body is always a dangerous combination!! But he has to cope-up with that all the way through his career!!

I am not going to blabber on about Malinga for another 2 pages, if you don’t know anything about Malinga, Sorry bro this article is not for you!! (We can always meet in the next blog)

And the problem is Sri Lankan cricket board offered Malinga a contract for the year 2012. Since he doesn’t play test cricket anymore, SL cricket board didn’t include him in the elite group of the contracted players and so the money offered to him didn’t amuse Malinga enough!  So he denied the contract but assured that he would go on to play Sri Lankan team without a contract!!

Malinga chose money over country!!

That is the major accusation thrown against Malinga!! And my question is what the hell is wrong in his decision! Let’s think with honesty (which itself is a rare commodity these days). What would we do if you have to make the same decision as him! Would we forego all the fortune of IPL for the so called patriotism! No one gets the better of both the worlds! You can’t be a good guy for all the people, you could choose money so you could live the rest of your life in luxury and you can keep your family in a position where you don’t have to worry about the money!! But you will have to put up with all the bashes from the ‘Patriots’!! Or you could always choose your country and you may live like a normal player (No one will praise you for not choosing money over country, for example look at Sangakkara and Mahela (That’s the normal mental attitude of the people, they would not remember you unless you do something against their ideologies)) with modest money (which you will get after an year). Which one would you choose!! If you are going to say that you would choose IPL two words for you, “Get Real”!!

 

Patriotism is one of the most overrated things in our country!! And we base all our decisions and ideas on this so called patriotism. Stop picking those stones to throw at me for saying it!! What I am saying is patriotism is an important thing in our life. After all our country spent a lot of money and lot of human hours on every single citizen of our country. But we need to understand, not everyone would make their decisions based on patriotism!! And we should not judge them for not making patriotism based decisions!

 

Biggest irony of this Malinga situation is that most of these Malinga bashers would always prefer private sector to the government sector!! If you guys are all hardcore patriots, why don’t you all go and work for the government sector! Salary from the government sector may not be high enough, but screw the money, who wants it, we all are patriots and for us country comes before money and all other shit!  Most wouldn’t do that, because private sector offers more money and money dictated the terms for those! So are those private sector employees are less patriotic than the government employees!! 

And we should not deny the fact that Mumbai Indians helped Malinga when he was out of the team for one and a half year due to an injury! And the fact that Mumbai Indians bowling Coach Shaun Pollock played a big part in fine tuning Malinga’s game!!

He is not the first player to deny the contract and nor he won’t be the last!! Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard are those other players who have denied the contract in the past! But in their situation, they don’t play for their countries anyway. They play for a unified cricket union. So their patriotism went un-questioned!! And they play more or less like a free lance cricketers!!

But Malinga does only play in IPL!! He denied all the offers he got from Big Bash, BBL and South African T20 league, about which I am pretty sure most of you people would be unaware of!! He made that decision so he could play for his country! I don’t blame you people; No one remembers the good deeds done by the opposite person!
Cricket is a young man’s game! You have to make full use of it when you can! With that ‘Papadum’ body he could not play the game at the highest level for many years! Sooner or later his career will come to an end because of an injury! There is nothing wrong in making money when he can do it!

He chose money and family before country! So What??

 

But he chose money over the country! There is nothing wrong in it! But at the same time you can’t pin all of our hopes on a guy who doesn’t want to commit for his country! We should find some other pace bowling talents and should nurture it!! Right now our bowling attack relies a lot in a person who doesn’t want to commit for the team! It is his decision to deny the contract, let’s respect it and get over it!

 

Time to find another Malinga!!