Downfall of Sri Lankan Cricket: Local Fans’ Perspective

Abstract

Even though the most popular and the most watched game during last few decades in Sri Lanka is cricket, it has been witnessed that the cricket fans are becoming less excited about the game of cricket during last years since Sri Lankan National men’s cricket team showed a losing momentum. Hence, bridging the gap in the context with empirical knowledge, the current study attempts to identify whether Sri Lanka Cricket actually has a downfall, and if so, what caused it, from the perspective of local cricket fans. Overall design of the study is qualitative. A trend analysis was performed using secondary data related to Test and ODIs match wins/draw/tie. A total of 74 Facebook comments were collected for the public question asked from July 14 at 11:54 PM to July 21 midnight. The qualitative data analysis; conventional content analysis was performed using the Atlas.ti application software. The comments carried 118 opinions out of which 2 said there is no downfall in Sri Lankan Cricket, and 116 said different opinions of the losing trend. The trend analysis provides that there is a downfall in Sri Lanka Test/ODI National men’s Cricket over last 8 years. According to the fans’ comments; poor management strategies, sport and politics, domestic cricket (school/club) issues, individual talent related issues, issues in selection of players, and sport commercialization are the main reasons whilst player replacement succession planning issues, issues related to the infrastructure distribution, and sport celebrity nature cause minor effect on the downfall of Cricket in Sri Lanka. Accordingly, it is suggested to formalize the selection procedure of players to the national team and establish a sound mechanism to regulate sport commercialization & eradicate undue political influences.