In the centre of the scandal: Saman Kandage (left) and Kasun Gamlath[/caption]
The Australian visa scandal exposed by ‘The Herald Sun’ last week, involving former Sri Lanka club cricketer from Moratuwa Saman Kandage alias ‘Sam’ who is now based in Melbourne, takes a noteworthy twist here in Sri Lanka.
The scandal, as exposed by the leading Australian daily on Friday (30 October) revealed Kandage, with the help of another Sri Lankan named Kasun Gamlath, have involved in providing visas for young Sri Lankans to enter Australia, on occasions as mock first-class cricketers, and later settle down there, while charging from each nearly Aus. $ 10,000 (Rs. 1.29 million).
Fake stats on internet
We at ‘The Morning Sports’ said on Monday (1) that the scam may lead to unravelling further scams in Sri Lanka.
‘The Herald Sun’ report said: “Players must show statistical evidence via Cricinfo” adding “Player stats are sometimes falsified in profiles at the Sri Lanka end”.
It also said that those stats are “mysteriously disappeared from some Sri Lankan players’ profiles about three months after they had obtained visas.”
View of our Melbourne sources
The Sri Lanka agents have provided meagre facilities for those who have visited in Australia once cramping as many as 17 people inside a single house with only three rooms. They have also allegedly taken a portion of the payment received by the players from their clubs.
As ‘The Morning Sports’ understands from our sources in Melbourne, the scandal has been taking place for many years.
There are two pertinent questions that arise in this regard:
1) Who at Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) issued those ‘fake players’ the certifying letters, under its letterheads, to apply for visas?
2) Who manipulated the world’s leading cricket website, which is Cricinfo, as is mentioned in the said ‘Herald Sun’ report, and particularly its player profiles and data (at least for the duration that their respective visas were being processed)?
SLC’s reaction
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SLC CEO Ashley de Silva[/caption]
When we made the first question to SLC CEO Ashley de Silva yesterday (2), he said that what they have done is only to issue a letter on request, for anyone who is to concern them, depending on the applicant’s Cricinfo player page.
“We cannot accuse anyone. We are carrying out an investigation. We don’t know who has done adjustments in the Cricinfo scores. It might have been done internally (within Cricinfo),” he said.
“When it comes to the visas, what happens is when a player comes and asks for a letter, we issue it to whomever who may concern. We never issue a letter asking for visas directly.
“But they (at the SLC) look at the Cricinfo and just put the statistics of the player and include them in the letter. Other than that, there is no involvement from SLC as such.
“But we are carrying out an investigation to see whether there is anything wrong being done at our end. They (SLC office) extract all the information from Cricinfo. If the Cricinfo information is wrong, automatically the letter that is issued to the player becomes wrong.
“The Australian cricket authorities have not written to us so far on the issue. So far we haven’t heard anything from Cricket Australia. We have seen only the media reports.”
Cricinfo’s reaction
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Cricinfo SL’s Data Analyst Chaminda De Silva[/caption]
The following is the response to the second question above, made by Cricinfo Sri Lanka office’s Data Analyst Chaminda De Silva:
“After this report appeared in Australia, some have asked me whether we can post a web page arbitrarily for a player or alter stats on a page. I told them that you can’t do it. What we can do is to make a profile for a new player. That page is built up only when that player starts playing and when those details are reaching to us in a scorecard (of a match). I’m also puzzled as to how a page in our site can be altered like that.
“We start making a player page from the very beginning through the details given to us by the scorers. Then the page is gradually built up as the respective player continues to play matches. It is on a very few occasions that a page becomes duplicated.
“Another possibility of forgery could happen when a scorer provides us an entirely false information of a player playing in a match. That is also impossible to happen because if such a thing happens, the other players who played that match will instantly notice the wrongdoing.”