Sri Lanka exit World Cup quietly but a familiar noise is brewing back home

At no point in their final league match, against New Zealand in Bengaluru, did Sri Lanka seem like they could win it. At no point across this World Cup campaign have they seemed like serious contenders.

It used to be true of Sri Lanka that they would frequently be under-rated ahead of major tournaments. In the years in which Lasith Malinga and Nuwan Kulasekara formed the core of one of smartest attacks in white-ball cricket, theirs was the team that carved joyous arcs through the competition - Kumar Sangakkara its run-scoring engine room, TM Dilshan and Mahela Jayawardene the batters who provided the high notes, Angelo Mathews a force in the lower-middle order.

So much has passed in Sri Lanka cricket since then that those days feel like they were several lifetimes ago. In any case, this team arrived in India with expectations already low; the shellacking they had received at India's hands in the Asia Cup final having sent what hopes there had been into a nosedive. And yet, they have still found ways to underwhelm, losing to teams they have never lost to in World Cups before, crashing to seven defeats in nine games.

Unlike say for England, the reasons for whose unraveling takes a little investigation, Sri Lanka's woes are more obvious. In no particular order:

As the men's team slid to another deflating defeat, the news cycle at home was aflame with every kind of opinion, voiced chiefly by politicians. There were suggestions of pro-India conspiracies, opinions about how this team was being led, players that should be scoring more runs or taking wickets, selectors accused of favouritism.

While a parliamentary session abounded with loud and emphatic evidence that Sri Lankan politicians know very little about cricket, there was also a reminder that this does not stop them from intruding on the sport. On Monday the sports minister sacked the entire cricket board and installed an interim committee led by Arjuna Ranatunga, yes, but which also contained two sons of politicians, with no known cricket or administrative experience. One day later, this committee was struck down by the courts, and the old board reinstated.

For these kinds of people, Sri Lanka's on-field losses serve only as opportunities to gain political capital. The same crowd has been jockeying for position for decades, board members forever in the laps of politicians, politicians making hugely publicised "interventions" when they feel the national mood will tolerate it.

New ideas? A taking stock of global standards and a sober restructuring of domestic cricket to bridge skills gaps? A long-term strategy to spread the game more meaningfully in a country in which you basically have to live in Colombo to play senior cricket? These are topics frequently ignored in favour of self-serving speeches and comments.

Some have long said that we are witnessing the slow death of a once-great cricketing nation. The men's team has not, after all, made a single ICC tournament semi-final since 2014, up to which point they had been a dynamic and steadfast presence in the knockouts.

But to begin printing eulogies is also glib, because Sri Lankan cricket is not without signs of periodic regeneration. In this tournament, Dilshan Madushanka has broken out, as has Sadeera Samarawickrama and, to some extent, Pathum Nissanka. Between these three, plus the likes of Kusal Mendis, Hasaranga, Theekshana and Dunith Wellalage, Sri Lanka have the core of a team that could play one more ODI World Cup cycle, maybe two.

More broadly, the women's team has had its best year ever in 2023. An aging Chamari Athapaththu still carries them, but team-mates have begun to support her more readily.

But we are in an era in which Sri Lanka fans have begun to subsist on the meagrest positives. A magic ball there, a spectacular innings here, a furious chase two months later. A couple of young players coming through, even though the team is failing. It's not just the men's team that is failing to match the excellence it once embodied; everyone's standards have fallen.

What it is that Sri Lankan cricket needs has been detailed on these pages on many occasions, the first and most important of which is a complete restructuring of domestic cricket, and far greater investment into the domestic game.

What Sri Lanka is getting instead is a parliament that has lost the faith of its public (as polls have said outright and last year's mass protests strongly suggested) quarreling over the running of SLC, which is an institution that inspires even less faith. Who will emerge in charge of SLC over the next few weeks remains to be seen. Right now, it is all a whirl.

But the country's cricket has been through enough cycles of this now, and it is difficult to be hopeful about meaningful change. The men's team has just wrapped up its worst World Cup campaign of Sri Lanka's professional era. But then they were never expected to make the semis anyway.