Cricketing woes

Sri Lanka Cricket has been mired in mud for a while but now the ground around it is getting murkier, with the inevitable political fallout from it not too far away. It was clear during the parliamentary debate on the resolution to remove the Chairman and office bearers of SLC that the ruling Party is divided on how to go forward to put Sri Lanka Cricket back on track from its dismally low point.

Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe who locked horns with SLC officials almost from the time he took office fired the first salvo by appointing an interim committee for cricket on 6 November only to have the decision overturned the next day by the Court of Appeal. Days later the International Cricket Council Board suspended SLC’s membership of the ICC adding to the Minister’s woes.

Since then, he has cut a lonely figure within Government ranks and left looking more to the Opposition to back him up on the serious charges he’s levelled, not only against the present office bearers of SLC but also a member of the judiciary who ruled against the interim committee he had appointed.

Ranasinghe’s path could be politically destructive for him but he seems to be acting with the conviction that the rot inside SLC must be cleaned up. He is on the war-path with President Ranil Wickremesinghe too, contradicting statements issued by the President’s Media Division (PMD) on SLC related matters as well as implying that the Chief of Staff to the President Sagala Ratnayake has been meddling in his subject matters.

The cricket controversy has also spilled over to the parliamentary committees, namely the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) with both the Sports Minister and SJB MPs accusing its Chairman SLPP National List MP Ranjith Bandara of attempting to shield SLC when its officials appeared before the Committee on Tuesday.

Several opposition MPs who serve on the Committee demanded that Bandara be removed from the post until the probe into the Auditor General’s report on SLC is completed. The Sports Minister went a step further and demanded that an opposition lawmaker be handed the post of COPE Chairman until the inquiry into SLC is concluded.

Having a Government MP as Chairperson of any oversight committee is problematic. SJB MP Harsha de Silva was named Chairman of the Public Finance Committee after much rigmarole but the two important oversight committees, COPE and the Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) are headed by Government MPs. 

Whatever side one may be on, there is general acceptance in the country that Sri Lanka cricket is facing an unprecedented crisis and public faith in cricket administrators is at an all-time low. Some officials who appeared before COPE on Tuesday were clearly telling half-truths and trying to mislead not only Parliament but also the public with half-baked responses to questions relating to financial mismanagement.

The cricket loving public of this country view both the cricket administrators and politicians with suspicion as all are keen to score points in the public domain. Parliament has a vital role to play in restoring public confidence in the much-loved sport as SLC with its claims of being a private entity clearly wants to cover its tracks and carry on with its business-as-usual attitude. The public are weary of the same old excuses and hackneyed explanations by which SLC officials are digging themselves deeper into a pit.

SLC has to come clean, and Parliament must put aside political divisions and conduct their investigations in a transparent manner so that the public of this country can have answers to what led to the dismal fall of Sri Lanka cricket.