Exceutive bussines from home

THE numbers add up to confusion. When two minds can rarely share one view on almost anything, heaven knows how seven can agree on, of all things, the composition of the Sri Lanka national cricket team, ever a debatable thing. The expansion of the selection panel to seven, from last term's four, so stupefies the senses that, honestly, you can't help but laugh, as did Arjuna Ranatunga, one never given to flippancy in matters of cricket. But he couldn't desist from making a joke of it. He as good as asked why stop at seven _ ''pick four more and have a cricket team of selectors." He might have taken the joke a step further and pointed out that the ratio of one selector to each player would give us another world record. Cricket selection is not about ratios, but about serious debate before decisions are taken. So, if the sort of numbers Ranatunga jokes about sit down to cross- talk their way through to a Sri Lanka eleven, the atmosphere is likely to be. well, a fish market would be a quieter place. The Sport Ministry's number of seven won't assure tranquility behind those closed doors, either. And it would be advisable if the SLC hierarchy forbids taking chinaware into selectors' meeting room, and use instead lightweight plastics to bear their refreshments - lest they be used as missiles should unyielding verbal duels let free the beast in man. After all there's the 1999 precedent when those beasts ran loose at the AGM, no less. If all this sounds hilariously absurd, it's because a seven-man selection panel is just that. hilariously absurd. Cricket administrators, in the past, have taken quite some extraordinary decisions. But to be fair the seven-selector idea is not one entirely of their making. The SLC, in fact, recommended a five-member committee (Kaluperuma, Wickremasinghe, Madurasinghe, Arunasiri and de Silva) to the Sport Minister, as the Sport Laws require it to do. If SLC was hoping the ministry would rubberstamp its list of selectors, they were knocking on the wrong door. A better set of names, admittedly, could've been nominated by SLC. But that wasn't the grouse of ministry officials - apparently it was the absence of certain names from the list that irked ministry officials.