The scattered West Indies tour of Sri Lanka U19 team is getting worse by each passing day, as now senior selector Vinothen John has been stuck in Sri Lanka due to another unfortunate incident, Cricket Age exclusively learns
Making a complete mockery of the tour, the team management, with players, is going on daily basis in batches for a tri-series in West Indies, involving home side and England.
The departure itself, for the tri-series, has become joke of the year for Sri Lanka Cricket Board (SLC), as due to the incompetence of national team chief selector Asantha De Mel and his colleagues, the visa process for the team has itself been stretched for too long, that the tour has already completely lost its significance.
First, US Embassy rejected visa applications of 7 players twice, left SLC with only option to apply for UK visa. Then only, team departed in three batches, that too only after the schedule of the tri-series was changed.
However, one of the senior selector Vinothen John, with a player, is still in Sri Lanka.
Cricket Age understands that the particular player damaged the passport and is expected to get new one today only. So, in order to accompany the player, flight of Vinothen John was also cancelled at the last moment. Now, his departure for West Indies is still unclear, depending the availability of the flight.
This is the first time in Sri Lanka Cricket history, that players visa applications were cancelled!
When Cricket Age inquired, it learnt that even though there is a junior selection panel for the U19 and rest of the school sides, it is the incompetent committee of Asantha De Mel, who is calling all the shots, interfering in the junior teams selection process. And, the main reason for visa embarrassment is that Asantha and his Co selectors couldn’t submit squad on time.
Also, sending Vinothen John as selector on tour is itself a joke, as there must be junior selectors on the U19 tours. Apart from that, Vinothen John doesn’t know anything about any of the U19 player, even then he was on Bangladeh joyride also recently, where Sri Lanka lost five match series 4-0 embarrassingly, as manager and school representative were busy in importing whisky bottles, leather jackets and other accessories!
