By Dhammika Ratnaweera
With a week away from the much-awaited cricket elections and their opponents being crippled by legal impediments on eligibility to contest, now the most probable fore-runners to govern Sri Lanka Cricket for the next two years, Dharmadasa camp sounded confident as they harped on the subject of eliminating corruptions in cricket and regaining lost glory.
While the main contestant for the post of president of SLC Jayantha Dharmadasa announced that he had got the best team to govern cricket in this country, in the likes of Ranatungas and Mathivana, the heavy-weight in his team former world cup winning captain Arjuna Ranatunga said that he would personally look into the national cricket team to reinstate discipline and regain lost glory.
“Actually, I wanted to focus on school cricket as we had programmed earlier, but now after discussions, our committee asked me to take on the national cricketers in a manner that we take Sri Lanka cricket back on the correct path” said Arjuna Ranatunga, who was instrumental in forming and leading a team from nowhere to become the world champions in 1996.
Ranatunga explained that being only three months short for the world cup it would be difficult to form a winning team for the World Cup in June in England but he wanted to make sure that Sri Lanka team would be competitive and try to get into the semi-finals in all means possible.
“Discipline and the passion to play for the country will be the key aspects of the future Sri Lankan cricketers and the financial benefits would follow next. This is where I will make sure that discipline is reinstated among the cricketers and then would help create a team spirit and amicable dressing room atmosphere” elaborated Ranatunga, who is known well for his no-nonsense approach.
It is not only the passion and glory that we had lost in nation’s cricket, but we have been pointed out as the most corrupted cricketing nation in the world, with the ICC establishing a special Anti Corruption Unit in Sri Lanka. Aspiring president Jayantha Dharmadasa said that he will make sure that his administration would be corrupt free and transparent while he would also clean off all the mal-practices within the cricket administration at the SLC headquarters and would investigate into the all the charges against past and present cricketers by the ICC Anti Corruption Unit.
“It is important that we have a clean sheet on corruption charges and that would make ease for any administration, you cannot improve or move forward in any administration which is charged with corruption. We have to clean these allegations off and then make sure that even the cricketers are free to play their game without any allegations, approaches and other insinuations of corruptions” said Dharmadasa.
Meanwhile secretary candidate Nishantha Ranathunga reminded cricketers mentality today . Don’t forget Anjelo Mathews and Rangana Herath the two captains had to go FCID and wait long time and how could they play cricket with this mentality . So we wanted to build up their mentality and give more confidence to pay real cricket said Nishantha Ranathunga. Vice President candidate K.Mathvanan, Treasurer candidate Eastman Narangoda, Assit Treasurer Sanjaya Senarath and Assit Secretary candidate Hirantha Perera also associated this press briefing held at the Nawaloka Hospital auditorium .
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