Just one month ahead of the country’s high profile presidential election, Shammi Silva led administration at Sri Lanka Cricket Board (SLC) has granted a sum of 5 Lakh rupees as assistance for the team of one of the presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa’s ministry to participate in a T20 tournament, Cricket Age reliably learns.
In an all time record, a staggering 35 Candidates are set to contest Sri Lanka Presidential Election 2019, which will be held on November 16th. Sajith Premadasa is contesting as the ruling party (United National Party) candidate, while Gotabaya Rajapaksa is contesting as the main opposition candidate.
Cricket Age has the access of a minute of SLC Management Committee (MC) meeting, held on 11th September, that says a grant of Rs. 510,000/- has been approved.
“Hon. Sajith Premadasa, MP – Request of assistance for the Cricket team of ministry of housing construction and cultural affairs to participate in the ‘2nd” Perak International T20 tournament 2019. The MC minute reads.
“Approved to release a grant of a sum of Rs. 510,000/- through the ministry of Sports” by considering the request, SLC minuted it by approving the said amount.
In any case, Shammi Silva, right after taking over Maitland place as president on February 21, has put Cricket on the sidelines, as he has constantly been focusing on bringing more and more CCC players into national team, more and more CCC staff, members at SLC and is promoting few other ‘Politically influential‘ players as well.
As for as Cricket is concerned, Shammi Silva led administration has little time to bother about this. As a result, even though national team (without senior players) is doing wonders despite all the odds, Shammi has miserably failed to resolve the burning issues like suspended head coach Chandika Hathurasingha’s future (who is drawing a salary of 40,000$ for last three months by just sitting at Khetterama and without any specific job assignment), permanent head coach and spin bowling coach for national team and Asanka Gurusinha’s successor at High Performance Centre at Khetterama.
Just few months ago, Shammi Silva led administration had cancelled Women’s Team tour of Bangladesh, for financial reason. Not only Shammi, his controversial deputy Ravin Wickramaratne, who is breaking his own record of overseas joyrides despite being an accused in match fixing in domestic match, attempted to not renew the contracts of several senior domestic players, citing financial reasons! Moreover, Cricket Age had itself published a story few months ago, that SLC is bankrupt!
However, for non cricketing things, Shammi Silva led administration has left no stone unturned to make it big. For the World Cup, entire SLC ExCo members, stakeholders were on UK joyrides. Shammi Silva lawyer friend Kuvera De Zoysa has been paid excessively for legal advices. CCC member and Shammi Silva’s personal assistant Tanesh Dias recently toured Pakistan with the national team. In addition, Shammi Silva is also developing cricket in certain areas like Badulla and Puttalam (SLC has granted 226,000/- for the Puttalam DCA as well during the same MC meeting on September 11), just like his godfather Thilanga Sumathipala was developing cricket in Polonnaruwa with his then Sports Minister friend Dayasiri Jayasekara!
