Bandula Warnapura is Asian Cricket Council’s Development Manager. He assumed the post in July 2008, taking care of development plans in 18 ACC member nations. The first ever captain for Sri Lanka in Tests and ODIs, Bandula has held various administrative jobs in Sri Lankan cricket. He was on a visit to Kathmandu recently. Binod Pandey and Somesh Verma, from NepalCricket caught up with him. Excerpts of the interview:
NepalCricket: Last time we interviewed you, almost 3 years ago, you talked about CAN needing to have structural changes. Things are not happening that way, are they?
Bandula: I agree. They haven’t developed the way they should have. I want the ground in Mulpani to be ready in six months. We’ve seen pavilion coming up. No point having pavilion if you don’t have grounds. Most important thing in cricket is the ground. Dressing room is designed to change your clothing to play. But here, you have pavilion. You change your clothing, but do what? The objective should’ve been to develop the ground to play cricket. That’s what we need now. I don’t say it should have been on a grand scale, at the level of international stadium. But you must be able to play a few matches. So, that’s what we need now. It’s a good thing that they’ve started a gym, at TU ground.
Not that the things are not happening. But they’re not happening at the pace that we expected. By now we’ve said that there must be a ground. They’ve started on the ground but there are some difficulties about the drainage. Birgunj has a ground and that needs to develop as well. Your senior Vice President is from that region. From what I hear, there’s another region which is giving you lots of players. The government has located a ground to put up a stadium. Let’s see by the end of this year or early next year, we can get this ground going. Pokhara, they’ve done a bit, but not complete. But Pokhara doesn’t have much cricket. The idea should be to give basic facilities needed in the area that’s giving your cricketers. It’s incentive for them to do much better.
NepalCricket: What do you think CAN should have done and it did not do?
Bandula: They must look at the team. There’s no point having 15 people in the CAN where only two or three are active. So the people who are active, people who are capable should work as a team. We know sub-committees are there, so they must start working. We have to push from our side to make sure they utilize the funds they get from ICC. You all need facilities. That is number one. Your U-19 team has played in the World Cup. Your senior team is doing well in WCL. So what you need now is, keep on giving them the infrastructure that they need.
NepalCricket: Last time you talked with us, you said that all the people who work in CAN are voluntary. You said we needed professionals running it.
Bandula: Well, actually professionals are there. There are certain positions where you need professionals. You have professional as the national coach. But you don’t have a permanent manager in the national team. So you need a manager. It’s not about a case of giving chance to CAN officials in every tour, it is not going to serve your purpose. You got to have a permanent manager who will work with the national coach, who will represent CAN on a long term basis. Same thing with the U-19 team. You got to have a coach under the national coach. You got to have the manager under the national manager. That’s the long term plans you need to have.
NepalCricket: You had also talked about having CEO and accountant at CAN.
Bandula: There is an accountant now. Accounts are done by monitoring the templates and account sheets, and the audit report is coming in. It’s about utilizing the funds you have in the right manner. We are monitoring that part, in fact. That’s done every year, every six months. The money coming in, yes, we monitor that. But only to see whether you are getting the benefits of the investment you’re doing. The return you’re going to get in investment without long term and permanent and qualified people, you’ll not get that. It is not about keeping the people in the association happy. It is about how you develop the game.
In your country you have two games: Football and Cricket. So, everybody wants to join the association because they want to go for tour. It is not what you want. Go on tours, along with development of cricket and your performance.
NepalCricket: Is ACC supporting the CAN enough?
Bandula: That you must tell us. CAN should say whether we’re supporting them enough or not. We can’t say. We have 18 countries. We can’t be supporting only CAN in a special way. We’ve our management. We look at it at the end of the year. They will say, did you all mistreat CAN or gave them special favors or did you not give CAN what you’re giving other countries. All these 18 countries are our children.
NepalCricket: But CAN is not getting any event.
Bandula: You have a problem of crowd control. You had a problem with crowd control in ICC event. Now we still want to play one more tournament if possible here in 2013. And educate you police, public everybody that if you misbehave, you’re going to lose these. It is a security international issue. We need your support, the media support in this.
NepalCricket: Has CAN done enough to assure you of security?
Bandula: They’ve given us an assurance. But we must see it practically. Therefore, media especially needs to educate the people who are coming to watch the match. They were annoyed with their own team, that’s why they did that. But you can’t do that. The number one thing here is your support.
NepalCricket: How do you think CAN can actually ensure that?
Bandula: The security people should not be looking at the ground. They should be looking at the crowd. If something starts, they should immediately go control that. One person can start, but it can be contained there.
We are coming in. Along with CAN we want to work with the spectators, with police, security, educating them how to control the crowd. We have to give leaflets to them, telling them about it.
NepalCricket: Was that the reason Nepal lost hosting World Cricket League Division 4?
Bandula: Yeah. ICC is asking us if we can assure. So we are asking CAN if they can assure us of crowd behavior. CAN said ‘yes we can’, but we have to do it and show them as quickly as possible, so that they don’t have that fear.
NepalCricket: Are you confident about it?
Bandula: Yes. I come from Sri Lanka, where we had war. During those times when we had cricket matches, we never had problems. Everybody liked cricket. In your country too, people love cricket that’s why 15,000 people are coming to watch cricket matches. But they have to keep that discipline. That’s why we want to educate them.
NepalCricket: A lot of changes have happened in CAN in last one year. How do you view it?
Bandula: Changes happen for good. People believe that they must have a change that’s why they happen. The new team hasn’t even worked for one year. They need six months to learn what had gone wrong, six months to put it right and keep on doing it. So we need to give them another year. We have no problems from CAN. They’ve been getting ACC funds and also from ICC. They had a problem as the person who was doing accounts was changed. New person did not know the system. We’ve trained them, educated them now. Things have started working. Thing on our part is to educate them.
NepalCricket: We’ve always been talking about the number of matches our players get to play, which is very less.
Bandula: That’s what you need to look into. You must decide exactly how many matches and what type of matches you need to play. Go on tours to India, which is close-by. You don’t need Visa to go there, rather than looking for far away destinations. If you play cricket in India, you will improve. There may be people who want to go to other countries, not that it will not help, but it will cut down your cost. Going to India would be much more effective in terms of money you spend.
NepalCricket: So, when is the next event being held in Nepal?
Bandula: We haven’t had development meeting. When we have it, we will decide on it. Nepal has a chance, but we need your support to educate the public. If you have any behavior problem from the crowd, I don’t think any event will come here. It’s bad luck.