By Revatha S. Silva
[caption id="attachment_143339" align="alignleft" width="496"]
(From left) Newly-appointed SLC Director of Cricket Tom Moody, Technical Committee Chairman Aravinda de Silva, SLC President Shammi Silva, Secretary Mohan de Silva, and Technical Committee member Muttiah Muralitharan address the media in Colombo on 25 March[/caption]
One of the highly-placed officials of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) has shown his concern, and agitation, over the present SLC Technical Committee’s (TC) alleged intervention on the national cricket affairs, The Morning Sports reliably learnt.
The said official, who had been one of the main figures of SLC administration through the last two decades, has raised the issue when the SLC top-brass met last, after the national cricket team left to England for their scheduled white-ball series.
As a remedy, the same SLC ex-com member along with Jerome Jayaratne, who currently oversee SLC’s high performance centre amongst other things, have been appointed to attend future TC meetings, it is also learnt.
Two to sit in TC meetings
“The issue was taken up when the SLC management met last time. I would say the issue (TC’s involvement in cricket affairs above SLC ex-co) was a concern at that meeting. Therefore as a solution, one of our ex-co members and Jerome Jayaratne were named to sit in the TC meeting in future,” a senior SLC ex-co member told The Morning Sports on Monday (14).
“But we have to wait and see whether the TC will take decisions collectively in future,” he added.
Meanwhile another leading SLC official said: “At the moment there is no such opposition to the Technical Committee within the ex-co. We all work as a unit. Our detractors who wanted to contest us in the last election might be spreading those rumours with the intention of disrupting the affairs.”
SLC need to take responsibility
The above-said ex-co member explained further, though, that the high-handed behaviour of the TC has created some unrest within the SLC ex-co.
“On the one hand, the TC has been endorsed by the Sports Minister. On the other, it was appointed at a time when there was no elected body at the SLC (the Administrative Committee under Prof. Arjuna de Silva looked into the cricket affairs then). Therefore there should be a better understanding between the TC and SLC in future. If things go wrong, it is the SLC ex-co which will have to take the entire responsibility,” he said.
Undue intervention
The Morning Sports reported at least twice previously that there was growing concern amongst SLC higher-ups over the allegedly undue intervention of the TC, headed by Aravinda de Silva, in sensitive administrative affairs including top-level appointments.
The appointment of Cricket Director Tom Moody for a stratospheric salary and sending him with the Sri Lanka tour party to England, in spite of his main areas of work being only talent identification and restructuring of coaching, had come only to aggravate such concerns.