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Sri Lanka players cancel Oxford visit |
| Saturday, May 30, 2009 - LONDON: |
Members of Sri Lanka's national cricket team have cancelled a planned appearance at Oxford University because of security concerns, officials said on Friday.
Muttiah Muralitharan and Kumar Sangakkara were due to visit the Oxford Union debating society alongside team manager Brendon Kuruppu on Friday.
But the Oxford Union said in a statement that the visit had been cancelled after Britain's Times newspaper reported that more than 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed during Sri Lanka's recent offensive against the Tamil Tigers.
"This afternoon, the Sri Lankan cricket team's security advisers have informed us that, due to the heightened threat levels posed by today's Times front page, they have decided to cancel this afternoon's visit by Muttiah Muralitharan, Kumar Sangakkara and their manager, Brendon Kuruppu," it said. "This is obviously extremely disappointing and we apologize profusely for it."
Major General Lawrence Fernando, Sri Lankan Cricket's security consultant, had previously inspected the Oxford site and briefed the players about security measures. "But today we were informed the measures were not put in place," Kuruppu said. "Also the ICC security consultants were informed that the function was cancelled first and then at short notice they informed once again that it was on. But since the security consultants had not done the necessary security surveillance of the site they advised us not to take the risk.” |
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