Cricket: Now the SLC club tournament running into a quagmire

With the stakeholders seemingly taking up arms against Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) officialdom, it is likely that the first tournament for the 2016/17 season will be hit by a legal snag. 

The first tournament for the season is billed to be the under 23 club tournament scheduled to begin in the first week of July with 14 premier division teams and the 10 emerging teams padding up. 

There would be two tournaments in the fray with the 50 overs-a-side tournament followed by the T-20 tournament. 

Yet, in a unique move, the tournament committee decided that two segments be amalgamated and have all twenty four teams taking part in the tournament as one for the two planned tourneys. 

Added to the woes, in spite of SLC being a full member of the ICC and with a professional circuit in place, there will be player fees given to the participants of these two tournaments. 

The bewilderment does not end there. 

Now it is learned that Kalutara Physical Culture Circle (Kalutara PCC) has been omitted from the tournament – making it twenty-three teams. 

However the Kalutara team is not going to stay lying low, they are hoping to institute legal action if the authorities go ahead with the move. 

The secretary of KPCC R.J.S. Perera claims that it is a purely a political move. “During the last cricket AGM we cast our votes to the candidacy of former SLC secretary Nishantha Ranatunga who lost. 

“Now we find that suddenly another faction of person who are not even members of our club have held their own AGM posing off as officials of the KPCC and tired to register a new set of officials when our duly elected club is still in office.” 

It was after a string of letters going to and fro the SLC administration decided to bar Kalutara PCC taking part in the division III tournament initially and now the under 23 tournament also. 

R.J.S. Perera further added “In 2004 the same thing occurred with a set of officials impersonating, but, once we instituted legal action they came down from their pedestal and came to an amicable settlement." 

When inquired from the secretary of Sri Lanka Cricket Mohan de Silva he said “Always there are two sides to a story. Now we are in the process finding out the real picture and we have handed over the inquiry to the Western Province Cricket Association as we are in the process of decentralizing the local cricket structure. However if they are not satisfied with the outcome they always could seek redress from the SLC”. 

However R.J. S. Perera is of the view that the Western Province Cricket Association is also an affiliate member of the SLC like our club Kalutara PCC and they have no authority to interfere in this matter.