Sri Lanka’s humiliated cricketers may have lost face with their adoring followers but their keepers at the country’s comfort zone for corruption called Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) bat on with a kind of immunity unsurpassed anywhere in the world and the team scheduled to return on Wednesday knocked out from the on-going T20 World Cup in the USA and the West Indies.
Not even a massive uproar in Parliament, a widespread public outburst and numerous investigative reports of documented corruption could have stood in the way of an administration that has been running or ruining the show for the past five years with nothing to showcase other than intransigence.
Never in its history has Sri Lanka been exposed to five debacles in five World Cups in five years and the bandwagon is set to continue with a pompous Sports Minister Harin Fernando playing for time.
In 2019 Sri Lanka contested the 50-over World Cup and could not make it to the semis, contested two T20 World Cups in 2021 and 2022 for the same results followed by yet another 50-over World Cup in 2023 and ended in the ninth slot at the 10-nation event.
To contest another T20 World Cup in 2024 and end up among the last is another brick in the wall that will never be brought down according to former SLC officials while the debacles have much in common with the country’s culture that prides itself only in history and are averse to changes. A World Cup won 28 years ago is even celebrated annually that bears testimony.
But what has irked most lay followers of the sport is that not even unsavory visible on-field results, not closed door corruption, can ring in the changes at an organization that is virtually above the law and sometime ago branded as the most corrupt public institution in the country by Sports Minister CB Ratnayake at a time it was not overflowing with the income of today.
“We are now suspicious of whatever happened to the (government) Probe Committee Report on what is taking place today in cricket which is run by the bookies (betting agents) and a lot has been revealed”, said Opposition Member of Parliament Hesha Vithanage who first blew the whistle on financial abuse at SLC two years ago.
While the Sri Lanka team prepared to play its last and irrelevant Group Stage match against the Netherlands on Monday, a draft document was presented to President Ranil Wickremasinghe yesterday that is said to have called for “enhancing administration and player well-being and restructuring of the Sri Lanka Cricket Board”.
