Money, the root of all evil in Sri Lanka cricket
Ask any Sri Lankan to name the greatest moment in the country's sporting history and the reply will always be the victory in cricket's 1996 World Cup.
Increasingly, however, many Sri Lankans have also begun to see the World Cup triumph as the worst thing that could have happened to the country's cricket administration.
By catapulting Sri Lanka from no-hopers to near top dogs, the victory has over the years poured a mini fortune into the cricket board's coffers.
"The World Cup brought money and money was the killer," Roy Dias, a former test vice captain and coach, said as the latest episode in the cricket board's saga of scandal and strife unfolded.
He said the latest crisis had money written all over it.
It started on March 26, when board President Thilanga Sumathipala sacked his long-suspended CEO Dhammika Ranatunga on charges of "a financial nature", a day after Ranatunga's brother Prassanna said he would not seek re-election as vice president because of corruption at the board.
The Ranatungas, brothers of World Cup-winning captain Arjuna Ranatunga and sons of a cabinet minister, are members of the country's most powerful cricketing family whose long alliance with Sumathipala has gone bitterly cold in recent weeks.
Two days later Sumathipala was also gone as the country's sports minister set up an interim committee and dissolved the cricket board after a court blocked its plans for a March 31 election, saying it had not furnished proper accounts in time.
The week ended with street protests both for and against the move.
NEW STADIUM
Controversies also surfaced over financing for the country's newest stadium in the north central town of Dambulla and Sports Minister Lakshman Kiriella's decision to stop payment on a series of last-minute cheques issued by the sacked administration.
"These questions are inevitable because lots of things at the cricket board including some of the television rights deals have been done in a very hush-hush manner," said Saadi Thawfeeq, a cricket columnist at the state-owned Daily News.
No one has been able to say how much money the board really has.
"It's impossible to give even a ball-park figure," said board spokesman Chandrishan Perera, adding the board would earn $20 million to $30 million from a television deal over the next three years on top of match fees, sponsorships and ticket sales.
That would easily make it, even by the most conservative estimates, the country's richest sports body, but with finances so complicated the interim committee is already baulking at trying to sort them out.
"I am suggesting that the sports minister appoint an independent audit committee to go into all financial matters that preceded us," said Michael Tissera, a former Sri Lanka captain who was appointed to the four-member committee.
ACRIMONIOUS ELECTIONS
But Thawfeeq said the board's money problems were too deep rooted for an "audited solution".
"Money has corrupted the whole election process," he said.
Local cricket clubs, which vote on the new administration each year, are starved of development funds if they back the wrong horse, giving rise to increasingly acrimonious elections, Thawfeeq said.
The lowest point came when gun-toting intruders disrupted a March 1999 board election pitting Sumathipala against Clifford Ratwatte, a relative of President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who said he was running to clean up cricket.
Sumathipala won comfortably, but soon found himself swamped in litigation challenging the legitimacy of his administration.
An interim committee ran cricket for several months but ended up getting the sack as another money scandal was breaking.
The cricket board has since stumbled from one crisis to another, mostly as a result of interminable power struggles.
Tissera said he was not optimistic about the new committee's chances of improving on its legacy.
"There is something radically wrong with the board. It's very difficult to see where we are going with all this," he said.
