In last one year, entire Sri Lanka has come to know that their National Team Chief Selector Graeme Labrooy is not interested in his job! There is someone else, who picks players and squads on the behalf of Labrooy. On Thursday, it proved once again, as Labrooy put a player Nishala Tharaka into Sri Lanka Board President XI squad, without knowing that currently he is in Bangladesh and is playing in the second test for A Team.
However, even though Labrooy Committed this big blunder, there are few more official’s at SLC, who didn’t do to stop this and allowed Labrooy to make Sri Lanka a laughing stock.
These official’s are : SLC CEO Ashley De Silva, COO Jerome Jayarathne and Manager of International Cricket Chandima Mapatuna.
According to SLC constitution, All the selectors sits together for picking a squad. They writes Players names on Selection Committee Book. As per the SLC constitution, either Board Secretary or CEO Chairs this meeting and he approved those names, written by Selectors.
As there is no Secretary at the SLC at the moment, It’s CEO Ashley De Silva and COO Jerome Jayarathne , who are responsible for this.
However, it seems they kept a blind eye and their incompetence allowed Labrooy to commit this blunder.
There is another culprit in the saga, though. After CEO approves the squad he sends it to International Cricket Manager. After that, it’s his responsibility till the end. So, even if Ashley and Jerome couldn’t get Labrooy blunder, it was Chandima Mapatuna’s responsibility to correct it.
However, he also ignored this blunder completely and sent wrong squad to SLC Media Unit.
This saga raises serious questions against all these incompetent officials, who are placed by former President Thilanga Sumathipala and are getting lump-sum salaries. Ashley and Jerome also received hefty increments on the last day of Sumathipala administration at SLC, on May 31st.
It is noteworthy that during his tenure in last two years, Sumathipala always spoke about his pillars. In reality, in last two years, domestic Cricket has completely been ruined, International Cricket suffered all time low, and there were no developments in the infrastructure of the game as well. And, now with these kind of Saga’s, it proves that Officials, on whom Sumathipala trusted blindly, are also incompetent. In all, as now Sports Minister appointed Competent Authority is overseeing the SLC, everyone has become incompetent!
“South Africa team is in Sri Lanka. Even before the start of the series, Labrooy and SLC Officials destroyed Sri Lanka image. It’s high time for Sports Minister to take action, otherwise Sri Lanka Cricket will be completely buried by these people’s” a former SLC President told Cricket Age.
