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.
