What Can One Expect On The Back Of Strong Leadership - Only A Fairy Tale of Triumph

Once upon a time, a cricketing fairy tale unfolded. A story where giants were humbled and where a country torn by war and economic ruin rose to the pinnacle of world cricket. The story of Sri Lanka’s 1996 World Cup win is nothing short of a fairy tale. It all started, as legends often do, with a single moment — a no-ball.

In the heat of a series in Australia, Sri Lanka was on the receiving end of a controversial call. Muttiah Muralitharan was no-balled for his bowling action. The decision was more than just an umpire’s call; it was an insult, a slur on Sri Lanka’s pride and as we will find out soon, the final straw. For years, Sri Lanka’s cricket team had been sledged, heckled, and accused of everything from ball tampering to destroying the spirit of the game. They were treated as underdogs, as outcasts. But this time, something shifted. The Australians, in trying to humiliate one of Sri Lanka’s finest, did what 14 years of civil war had failed to do: they united a team once divided by ethnic lines of Sinhalese and Tamil.

The call lit a fire in Arjuna Ranatunga, Sri Lanka’s captain, a man with a vision as sharp as his cricketing mind. Two months before the World Cup, Ranatunga had handpicked this squad for the tour to Australia. This was a team forged in the heat of adversity, and it was about to become something no one in the world had seen before.

Ranatunga’s strategy was simple yet profound: “When you control the narrative, you control the outcome.” And that’s exactly what he did. Behind closed doors, Ranatunga held marathon team meetings, stretching three hours a day before every match. Every possible scenario was dissected, every weakness of their opponents exposed. He broke the opposition down not just with the bat or ball, but with his mind. His team had a battle plan like no other.

He gave specific, surgical roles to each player. The opening batsmen, Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharana, previously batting at No 7 and 8, were given one instruction: rain hellfire on the opposition’s opening bowlers for the first 10 overs. And they did that with such fury and chaos that no fielding side knew how to respond. For the first time in cricket, teams abandoned traditional field placements. Gone were the third men, fine legs, and slips. Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharana had ripped the cricketing playbook apart.

Behind them came the reliable hands of Mahanama, Tilakaratne, and Gurusinha, who would anchor the innings. But the pièce de résistance, the man to whom Ranatunga gave no instructions but one, was Aravinda de Silva. “You’re winning us the World Cup,” Ranatunga told him. “You’re getting us a hundred.” De Silva was the only player with complete freedom, a man unleashed to let his imagination run wild on the field.

As the World Cup approached, the turmoil in Sri Lanka mirrored the tension within the team. The country was rocked by bomb blasts, and the Australian team refused to set foot on Sri Lankan soil. But Ranatunga, ever the master strategist, was unperturbed when he let out the war cry - “We want the Australians in the finals,” he declared. This was not an empty threat; it was part of his plan. Ranatunga was playing a long game, one designed over six years,.

Sri Lanka’s road to the finals was paved with the scalps of cricketing titans. They ousted the West Indies and went toe-to-toe with the Australians. The cricket world watched in awe as the once-dismissed underdogs, the team accused of being cheaters and spirit-breakers, tore through their opposition with a methodical ferocity.

With every match, the team grew stronger, more cohesive. The outside world’s attempts to break them only made them more resilient. They were a team that laughed in the face of sledging, that shrugged off accusations of cheating, that refused to crumble under pressure. The Australians had brought them to the edge, and from that edge, the Sri Lankans soared.

The World Cup final, played at Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium, was a showdown between David and Goliath. Australia, the cricketing powerhouse, stood on one side, while Sri Lanka, the underdog nation, stood on the other. But this wasn’t just a match; it was a reckoning.

The world watched as Aravinda de Silva, the man given free rein, played the innings of a lifetime. He stood tall against the very team that had mocked and belittled them only months earlier. He didn’t just score runs; he crafted a masterpiece. His century in the final was more than just a number on a scorecard; it was a statement. It was a declaration that Sri Lanka had arrived.

De Silva’s century, along with Ranatunga’s unyielding leadership, carried Sri Lanka to victory. When Ranatunga hit the winning runs, it was not just a triumph for the team; it was a victory for an entire nation. A team that had been sledged, heckled, and accused; a country bombed and boycotted; and a cricket board on the verge of bankruptcy had lifted the World Cup.

In the aftermath of their victory, the fairy tale was complete. This wasn’t just about cricket. This was about a small nation looking the world in the eye and saying, “We belong.” As cricket writer Telford Vice so beautifully summarized, “This marks the spot on the map of cricketing history where east looked west in the eye and did not blink. Instead, it winked and said, "try and keep up."

"Try and keep up.”