As cricket’s big match continued to snowball in Parliament with a bowl-out between a former and a present Sports Minister, none could have hidden the fact that the nation’s cradle was further rocked into submission as the next generation players returned to the country empty-handed thrown out from qualifying for the second stage at the Asia Cup.
With two defeats Sri Lanka’s budding cricketers have been left behind proving that their so-called guardians at Sri Lanka Cricket are living on borrowed time with vested interests to safeguard as the players’ shortcomings were severely exposed unable to even compete against the United Arab Emirates and Bangladesh that have made vast strides.
But the off-field battles to rid cricket of the scourge of financial misdeeds, corruption and nepotism hit centre stage for the 33rd time according to Parliament records as ousted Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe and his replacement Harin Fernando engaged in a showdown.
Fernando having nullified Ranasinghe’s Gazette notification for an Interim Committee to salvage the sport, claimed he was in no position to safeguard the corruption-ridden Sri Lanka Cricket administration and was awaiting the outcome of an Audit Report exposing financial misuse that he said he dispatched to the Attorney General’s Department.
“I scrapped the notification of the Interim Committee to run cricket in order to get the ban on Sri Lanka lifted and even notified the International Cricket Council (ICC) of the Auditor General’s Report (on corruption at SLC),” Minister Fernando told Parliament.
But the former Minister knocked back Fernando’s stumps saying the Auditor General’s Report on corruption at Sri Lanka Cricket was sent to the Attorney General’s Department by him in August.
Others pointed out that withdrawing the Interim Committee to run cricket meant the sport was redirected back into the hands of those who had ruined it.
But with the Sri Lanka team’s future left in tatters contesting the Asia Cup ahead of next month’s Under-19 World Cup, nothing more remains to be exposed of a failed Sri Lanka Cricket administration.
