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ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka’s parliament passed a resolution on Thursday to remove the top officials of the island nation’s Cricket Board over the 2023 World Cup debacle, a day after a local court granted a stay order for the officials to continue at least for two weeks.
In an unusual manner, the resolution was passed unanimously in a highly divided 225-member legislature. The move comes amid protests near the Sri Lanka Cricket Board head office in capital Colombo, demanding the top cricket officials to be ousted.
Cricket is the most populour sport in Sri Lanka, particularly after the South Asian Island nation won the World Cup in 1996.
Sri Lanka witnessed its cricket team’s worst performance in the highest level of the tournament since 1999 World Cup and politicians, senior players, and general public have criticized the Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), the official board which is responsible for the game in the country amid corruption charges and its officials are being close allies of gamblers.
Sri Lanka team lost seven out of nine games including for Afghanistan and ended the World Cup campaign with one of the lowest performances in the sports’ history.
“We all should unite to defeat corruption from sports,” Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe told the parliament before all the parliament members anonymously agreed to the resolution which sought the removal of the current cricket administrators.
On Monday, Ranasinghe sacked the SLC officials and appointed an interim committee headed by the 1996 World Cup winning team captain Arjuna Ranatunga.
Simultaneously, President Ranil Wickremeinghe appointed a four-member committee to look into the interim committee appointed by the Sports Minister.
On Tuesday, however, Sri Lanka’s Court of Appeal issued a stay order and quashed the sports minister’s decision to sack the cricket board and restored the expelled officials at least for two weeks, pending a full hearing.
The court accepted a petition by board president Shammi Silva challenging minister Roshan Ranasinghe’s move on Monday to dismiss the Sri Lanka Cricket board and appoint an interim committee.
The court decision was criticized in the parliament which drew some strong statement from the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL).
“The BASL strongly feels that statements being made in respect of ongoing court cases and reference to judges, purportedly taking cover on parliamentary privileges, is seen as a direct threat on the independence of judiciary,” the BASL said in a statement.
Power Minister Kanchana Wijesekara, a member of the four-member cabinet sub-committee appointed to look into the Interim Committee for Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) and its future activities, told the parliament if the International Cricket Council (ICC) decides to impose a ban on SLC by any chance as a result of the resolutions tabled in Parliament, the 225 members of the parliament should take over the responsibility for it. (Colombo/Nov 9/2023)
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