Sri Lanka’s sports activities minister Roshan Ranasinghe sacked the nationwide cricket board on Monday, days after a humiliating defeat by India on the World Cup. Ranasinghe has been at loggerheads with Sri Lanka Cricket — the richest sports activities organisation on the financially stricken island — for months over allegations of widespread corruption. The nation’s 1996 World Cup-winning skipper Arjuna Ranatunga has been appointed chairman of a brand new interim board, Ranasinghe’s workplace stated in an announcement. “Sports activities minister Roshan Ranasinghe has fashioned an interim committee for Sri Lanka Cricket,” the assertion stated.
The brand new seven-member panel additionally features a retired supreme courtroom decide and a former board president.
The transfer got here a day after the board’s second-highest officer, secretary Mohan de Silva, give up.
Ranasinghe publicly demanded the complete board’s resignations after Sri Lanka’s 302-run World Cup thrashing by hosts India final week.
Sri Lanka had been at one level 14-6 and had been all out for 55, the fourth-lowest World Cup whole in historical past, whereas chasing India’s 358 in Mumbai on Thursday.
The defeat prompted a public outcry and police have been deployed outdoors the board workplace in Colombo since indignant protests on Saturday.
Ranasinghe had stated that Sri Lanka Cricket officers had no ethical or moral proper to stay in workplace.
“They need to voluntarily resign,” he stated. He had beforehand accused the board of being “traitorous and corrupt”.
Sri Lanka play Bangladesh later Monday and wish a mathematical miracle if they’re to squeeze into the final 4 of the World Cup.
On Saturday Ranasinghe wrote to full members of the Worldwide Cricket Council (ICC) — which has guidelines towards political interference within the sport — asking for understanding and assist.
“Sri Lanka Cricket has been besieged with complaints of participant disciplinary points, administration corruption, monetary misconduct and match-fixing allegations,” Ranasinghe stated within the letters, launched to Sri Lankan media.
The minister was pressured by the ICC to withdraw a three-member panel he had appointed final month to analyze alleged corruption on the board after it was deemed to be political interference.
There was no instant response from the ICC to Ranasinghe’s newest transfer, which dismissed a board that was elected in Might, with president Shammi Silva on his third consecutive time period.
Sri Lanka haven’t received the World Cup since 1996, with Ranasinghe blaming the board for the “deterioration” of requirements.
One other cupboard minister, Prasanna Ranatunga — brother of the newly appointed interim board chairman — informed parliament in August that the 1996 triumph had been “the most important curse for our cricket”.
“Cash began flowing to the cricket board after 1996 and with that got here those that needed to steal,” he stated.
A former sports activities minister, Harin Fernando, launched robust anti-corruption legal guidelines in 2019 after saying that the ICC thought-about Sri Lanka one of many world’s most corrupt cricketing nations.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
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