Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) on Friday suspended all board-conducted domestic tournaments after being informed by the Director General of the Department of Sports Development Prof. Shemal Fernando that SLC had not received the consent of the Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe before making certain changes to the structure of the inter-club three-day tournament ahead of the 2023 season.
Implementing changes recommended in 2021 by the now defunct-Technical Advisory Committee headed by Aravinda de Silva, SLC conducted a Special General Meeting (SGM) in June this year, where it was decided that the bottom four clubs of the 2022 Major Club League tournament would be relegated from the top-tier league, which was effectively reduced to a competition between 22 clubs.
This meant that the four relegated clubs would play in the Governor’s Trophy, a lower-tier limited overs tournament – a decision the teams appealed, as it would deprive them of the opportunity to play three-day matches, widely considered as a requirement to maintain the quality of cricket at club level.
SLC accepted the appeal and created another, lower tier to the Major Club League tournament – Tier B – for the four relegated clubs which would not be granted first class status, and to ensure a fair number of matches, invited six teams from the Governor’s Trophy to also participate in this league.
However, one of the lower ranked teams in the Governor’s Trophy, Gesto Sports Club, had challenged this decision in courts and with the Sports Ministry.
While the courts had allowed SLC to go ahead with the new format of the tournament until the next hearing of the case scheduled for later this month, the Sports Ministry appointed an Appeal Advisory Committee that adjudged that SLC could not consider the rankings of the 2022 season in determining which teams featured in the league.
“Ranking the clubs according to the results of the 2022 season is not in accordance with the Sports Law, and the ranking should be based on the results of the 2023 season, and the new laws and procedures introduced in June 2023,” the letter signed by Prof. Fernando, conveying the decision of the Appeal Advisory Committee, read.
The letter also said, “The appeal board has decided that the amendments agreed upon in June 2023 has to be implemented with the approval of the Minister.”
SLC argue that they did seek the Ministry’s approval before making the changes, ahead of the June SGM, but did not receive a response.
“As the tournament structure has been incorporated into the SLC constitution, these changes required a minor amendment to the constitution. We wrote to the Minister and sought his permission as required before the SGM. We then sent multiple reminders to several ministry officials but did not receive a response,” SLC Secretary Mohan de Silva told the Daily Mirror.
“We went ahead with the SGM and the membership unanimously approved the changes to the tournament structure, and an official from the Ministry of Sports was also present at the SGM. As such we assumed we would not have any issues in making the changes, as they were being done by the Executive Committee for the betterment of the standard of cricket in the country,” he added.
“We were called before the appeal committee, where we explained the criteria by which the six teams from Governor’s Trophy, that were included in the Tier B tournament, were selected and explained why Gesto SC was not included. However, 10 days later we received this letter from the Director General of Sports,” he also said.
De Silva added that he and SLC President Shammi Silva then briefed the Minister on why it would be problematic to suspend the domestic tournaments, to which the Minister has shown a favourable response.
However, SLC learnt that the communication that they had sent the Ministry, regarding the changes it was making ahead of the June SGM, had been forwarded to the Attorney General’s Department, who were yet to share their legal opinion on the matter.
Not wanting to appear as it did not respect the directives of the Ministry, de Silva added, SLC’s Executive Committee decided to temporarily suspend its domestic tournaments.
(Daily Mirror)
