I am citing a topic discussed by a group of cricket legends that took place in a pub of an elite club boasting to be among the leading cricket clubs in Colombo. The subject was ‘ Cricket Lovely Cricket ‘ and I was lucky to be within the group of highly knowledgeable cricketers.
The Cricket Board that they call the governing body for cricket is in existence for well over 60 years if I am correct, and never in the history of cricket have Sports Ministers interfered in its affairs as is now evident.
Ever since Sri Lanka won the World Cup in 1996, it was a case of Interim Committees one after the other appointed by the incumbent Sports
Minister to satisfy the supporters of the governing party.
It was everyone's point of view that the government in power and its Sports Ministers were greedy to grab the Cricket Board coffers and it is obvious. While it is so, the cricketers who fail to contest an election tried to creep into the Board through cheap methods of applying pressure on the Ministers and poisoning their minds to castigate the elected body and take control of the Cricket Board via an Interim Committee.
It was shocking to note that the stake holders funds were fleeced beyond imaginable means as the Interim Committees were only accountable to the Sports Minister, denying the stakeholders the access to accounts?
The latest was when Minister Faiszer Mustapha appointed his secretary as Competent Authority since March 2018 and the Competent Authority was a big flop.
He was clueless about cricket and only wanted to utilize Cricket Board facilities to promote his image. Though Minister Faiszer had instructed the CA to declare elections the CA dilly-dallied enjoying the hospitality at matches offered by the SLC.
Staff contracts were on hold and it remains so.
The Ministerial interference still continues with Minister Harin Fernando calling for this and that obviously to delay SLC elections and when every trick had failed it was seen as a joke for Minister Harin to call for a forensic audit from 2014 to 2018, when in actual fact the Auditor General had done a good job in auditing 2016 to 2018 and clearing the air on accounts. It proves beyond reasonable doubt that the Sports Ministers are upto the same game disregarding the development of cricket. It's about time they allowed an elected body to run the day to day affairs of cricket in the country by holding elections.
Tyronne Alles
Battaramulla.
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