We refer to the article appeared in your news paper dated 30th November 2008 under the above mentioned heading and Sri Lanka Cricket wishes to submit the following reply for the interest of the cricket loving public.

Firstly, should members of several clubs have concerns about the newly introduced Grays cricket ball considering the on-going tournament will be used as a yard stick to pick the teams for the provincial tournament as you have rightly pointed out make all complaints and concerns to Sri Lanka Cricket rather than reporting them to the Sunday Times newspaper.

On the contrary SLC is yet to receive any verbal or written complaints from clubs on the above mattes.
If Sunday Times have received all these concerns from clubs, SLC kindly requests all complains to be forwarded to Sri Lanka Cricket for investigation by the Cricket Committee headed by Aravinda de Silva.
Presently all premier tournament matches are played with Gray’s super match cricket balls and the forthcoming provincial cricket tournament will be played with superior Gray’s balls made using Australian Leather.

Kookaburra balls are used for National team games / practice and will cost SLC between 50 to 85 Aus$ per ball while Gray’s super balls which are widely used around the World at first class cricket level will cost SLC between 10 to 18 US$ per ball.While thanking Sunday Times for highlighting the above, we sincerely hope that all concerns made to your good newspaper by the clubs will be forwarded to Sri Lanka Cricket to study the issues and to take appropriate action to rectify the same.

Please make arrangements to publish this clarification to the public by giving it the same level of publicity which was given to the above said article.

Your early attention to this matter would be highly appreciated.

Shane Fernando

Media Manager

Sports Editor Notes:

We would like to bring to the attention of Mr. Fernando that the players sought our redress because the matter had been brought up at the fixtures meeting. However when this situation arose we duly got the views of Mr. Chaminda Mapatuna -- Manager Tournaments SLC and Mr. Sidath Wettimuny a SLC cricket committee member.

Now with this little note we see that the players have lost allegiance towards the SLC administration and the SLC in turn have lost its control over the players. However we also must reiterate that we are not bound to refer player’s views to you directly, we would only do so through the due people’s forum – which are our sports columns.