Sri Lanka’s main opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe has asked the country’s parliament to come up with a legally-structured body to govern the nation’s troubled cricket administration.
The leader was critical of the current setup of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) and raised questions over the debt-stricken sports body.
“I propose the appointment of a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) to seek the views of all parties,” said Wickremesinghe. He added that the PSC should recommend the constitution of the proposed body and who should man its positions.
“This is an entity registered as a business venture. Certain individuals gain positions to make money, while another section tries to use political influences to acquire positions in the cricket administration.”
Wickremesinghe also questioned the spending patterns when Sri Lanka co-hosted the World Cup earlier this year. “When the estimated spending for the World Cup was for LKR1200 million, how did they end up spending LKR2400 million?”
Wickremesinghe denounced the political interference in SLC, saying that since 2005, the body has been run with politically-appointed interim committees, bringing negative results in administration and the performance of players.
ICC last month decided to make fair elections mandatory for all its member boards by 2012. Sri Lankan sports minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage has promised democratically transparent SLC elections in the first half of 2012.
Board to drop UDRS for Australia tour
Sri Lanka will not use the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS) for Australia’s forthcoming tour due to high costs, according to the country’s governing body.
“We won’t be using UDRS when Australia tour Sri Lanka this month,” said SLC Chairman Upali Dharmadasa, adding that the board had been unable to attract enough advertising money. “We can’t find a sponsor to be able to use the expensive technology.”
The Australian team arrives in Colombo on July 30 to play three Tests, five One-Day Internationals (ODI) and two Twenty20s.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) last month made UDRS mandatory for Test and ODIs “subject to availability and commercial considerations”. This means the Australian tour of Sri Lanka can still go ahead without UDRS.
Delayed start to Sri Lanka T20
Meanwhile, the country’s cricket authorities have announced a delayed start to the scaled-down Twenty20 premier league, without the expected international players.
The inter-provincial Twenty20 tournament will start on Thursday, two days behind the original schedule, and end on July 31.
SLC had planned to stage a T20 tournament modelled on India’s successful Indian Premier League (IPL), but it was scuttled when India banned its players from participating in the Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL). (With additional input from AFP)
Published in The Express Tribune, July 16th, 2011.
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the UDRS Syestem should not be this much expensive bzc the ICC made it for using it on regular basis so it should be on resonable prices of this technology so it can be used by every county very easily if they wont do this then only the rich board can use this technology in tournments...and the other board wont be able to use this technology ....