It’s heartening to realise that I had to interview a guy who has represented Sri Lanka in Cricket and Waterpolo and to top it off he had a second class upper degree from the University of Colombo in Science. He is six feet two inches tall, charming and wiry in build.
Jehan Mubarak was coaching his charges at Reid Avenue when I met him, I immediately had a rapport with him and I was relieved that I did not have to go through the hassle of converting Sinhala into English as, he spoke fluent English.
He was born in the United States, his father went to Cambridge University and won a blue in Cricket, Jehan came back to Sri Lanka when he was four years old and started his formative education at Royal College Colombo.He had a special word of thanks to late Lionel Mendis who had a coaching school at the NCC, by the way he is the elder brother of Nelson Mendis who now runs the famous CCC school of cricket at CCC. Lionel Mendis taught him not only about cricket but also about the etiquette by way of wearing white, greeting people and also tidiness and cleanliness. Lional emphasised the fact that Discipline, Determination and Dedication were the key factors in success.Jehan to this day stick by this 3 D’s and try to inculcate these to his charges.
Jehan rightly believes that cricket is a team game and budding young cricketers should learn to play for the team according to the match situation, the behaviour of the pitch and other such factors. He lamented that the present set of cricketers are playing for their own bubble, eg batting, bowling and fielding and not thinking about the bigger picture the team.
His talent was spotted early and got selected to the under15 world cup played in England, whilst still raw at Royal,his contemporaries were Kandamby,Gajanayake and Arshad Junaid. Jehan was earmarked as something special and he had an easy passage to the under19 World Cup in Sri Lanka in 2000, they came to the final and unfortunately was pipped at the post by the Indians.Jehan pointed out that this had gelled the team together well because from the under 15 World Cup days more or less the same squad was playing.
Although Jehan played for the Royal first eleven for four years and got six hundreds in that time the accolade of captaining college escaped him. He noted that leadership and captaincy are subjective at Royal and that they go by the book and not by merit.
As he went along Hemantha Devapriya his former Sr Lanka coach invited him to join CCC and he played for them for nine years, Lanka De Silva and Mario Villavarayan also played with him.
In 2001 Jehan got selected to play for Sri Lanka at the age of 21, his ODI captain was Marvan Atapattu and the Test captain was Hashan Thilakaratne.His Sri Lanka career span was from 2001 to 2016 sixteen long years, a guy who played from his age at 21 to 36 and having played only a handful of matches(13 Tests and 40 ODI’S) is a mystery to me. This tall elegant left handed bat and talented off spinner must have had a raw deal or was he playing in the wrong era?? Jehan was modest enough to find causes.
He had the opportunity of playing under different coaches of Sri Lanka, in a diplomatic way he praised all of them and stated that they all had their different strengths. Starting with Dave Whatmore Jehan reminisced that he had a knack of putting everyone at ease. Dave spoke a lot about each players strengths and weaknesses. As Dave quit the scenario then came the era of thorough professionalism and Tom Moody stepped in and he was the guy with whom Jehan learnt a lot. He was process oriented which was Jehan’s cup of tea, he never liked players just hanging around, Tom always channelled their focus to improve batting and to develop it.He was also hard on fielding. Trevor Bayliss coaching was somewhat on the lines of Tom Moody’s both been Australians commented Jehan and also noted the fact that Bayliss had a thick accent which the players found difficult to detect.
Jehan had some interesting comments about coaching :He noted that technique is a personal thing and was unique and Marvan Atapattu was a copy book coach and by the way he had the best technique out of all the Sri Lankan players including Mahela who had flair as his forte. Sanga was a perfectionist like Murali commented Jehan.
He was of the view that batsmen between the ages of 21 to 26 years needs proper guidance, where the coaches should have consisitency in the sense that coaches training styles should be uniform, this way the youngsters would not get confused.
According to Jehan a batters maturity starts at the ages 27/28 years and will peak at the age of 35 years.
What ails Sri Lanka Cricket? This what Jehan said “The dometic structure was weak and there were too many teams and as a result the coaching staff’s quality had gone down and that was the stumbling block. There was talent in abundance in schools and I have travelled far and wide to endorse that. Also we need to be patient with the players we pick. From the players point of view the need to cut off the social pressure and the media pressure which overshadows what they should really do like concentrating on the process. The different stake holders at cricket such as the media, officials, administration and the players should pull in one direction.The people up above does not recognise the players association and they have no voice and are criticised at every turn, they followed policy of divide and rule, like what the colonial culprits did to us.They now have the liberty to go to individuals and offer contracts loaded with money and ignoring the clause that are laid down.It used to be that when one player disagrees others would stand by him and not sign.”
“There is lot of money there and we don’t market cricket properly and as a result we are not getting fixtures in our favour” said Jehan.
He predicted a good future for our cricket provided that a proper structure is in place, Jehan stated that the right people should man the place up above, he said that no body wants to get in there and get their name tarnished. Somebody should put their hands up like the past cricketers with good reputations who are respected by every one eg Sanga, Murali,Sidath a nd Roshan.
His World Cup prediction-India and then England.
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