Sri Lanka’s World Cup winning captain in 1996 Arjuna Ranatunga said that he will make a request to president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to visit Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) headquarters and see for himself the corruption that is taking place so indiscriminately.
“I had lots of free time in hand for the last six months as I am out of the government to make a lot of investigations into what’s happening inside the cricket board. The present officials could not do anything good for the game and they were only destroying cricket,” Ranatunga alleged. “There are about 40 cases with SLC and only the lawyers are making most of the money.
Those who are working in banks are also in Sri Lanka Cricket helping to transfer monies to other bank accounts. Some of these monies are deposited to a bank account in the USA under a woman’s name.”
He also alleged that SLC has about 32 CCTV cameras and some important recordings have been erased within six days to hide the underhand dealings. Ranatunga said that he has been trying to get the audit report for a long time and it has now come out as a special audit report which will be studied and brought up in Parliament.
“This report has a lot of allegations of financial dealings and TV rights issues that has been corrupt. Some employees were given salary increments by the Lakhs, whereas in other companies employees were given increments only by the thousands.”
“Domestic cricket has been manipulated by some clubs for their benefit. The performance of the under-19 World Cup team has been unsuccessful and the team ended up in the tenth slot. Even teams from Afghanistan and Bangladesh are playing better cricket than Sri Lanka”.
“There are lots of issues happening in Sri Lanka Cricket and I am sure the present Sports Minister will get involved and clean up this mess,” said Ranatunga.
He further added: “We are glad that we are trying to keep people who are involved in betting to stay away from cricket. That’s the sports law of this country.
Unfortunately, the previous ministers never understood this or didn’t want to understand this. I want to thank former Minister Harin Fernando who brought this up in Parliament and obtained the approval. Now we have to take it from there”.