After the 67 millions loot through the recently concluded disastrous domestic tournament, now the Sri Lanka Cricket Board (SLC) has planned to spend millions once again on the sendoff of the national team for the World Cup campaign, Cricket Age reliably learns.
Sri Lanka will leave on May 7 to England for a one week camp before heading to Scotland to play two ODIs. Sri Lanka’s opening World Cup match is against New Zealand on June 1.
According to sources, even though the team is in shambles with embarrassing performances in recent times, the present SLC administration have decided to cash the opportunity big time. Cricket Age learns that the SLC are planning to release an official song, and organizing a lavish sendoff ceremony for the team.
In addition, the SLC has already hired it’s all time favorite PR Firm to do pre-publicity campaign and advertisement for the World Cup for two million rupees. The funny thing is that the management committee meeting of the SLC is scheduled for April 25, when the committee is likely to approve the proposal. However, even before the meeting, the board has brought that PR firm on board, as it is owned by the daughter of a top politician of the country.
It is noteworthy that few weeks ago SLC had organized a domestic tournament to select so called world cup squad. Even though the tournament turned out a low quality epic failure, two loyalists of former SLC President Thilanga Sumathipala – Sujeewa Godaliyadda and Janaka Pathirana benefited big time and milked millions through the upgrade drama of the Dambulla and Kandy grounds , as board spent whopping 67 Millions.
The shocking fact is that the present SLC administration has recently cut down player’s world cup revenue sharing by great extent in comparison to previous World Cup’s. During the domestic tournament as well, the players had been treated badly. During the matches in outstations like Dambulla and Kandy, players were forced to walk into streets looking for cheaper restaurantsfor the meals, as the money (3000 per day) given by the board was not enough to take lunch-dinner at the hotels.
For the World Cup also, SLC are giving just the token amount to players and are giving Sumathipala’s loyals a chance to loot millions by organizing the sendoff. The new world cup payment, introduced by SLC, intially met with some resistance from senior players but, with little bargaining power given their dwindling performance in the ODI format, they signed the contract eventually. The new payment structure includes a participation fee of US$ 300,000 – a huge cut compared to the previous World Cup in 2015.
Another shocking fact is that even though the entire country is mourning the loss of more than 350 innocent lives in the serial bomb blasts on Easter Sunday, the SLC are shamelessly planning a sendoff, just to loot more money!
