Sports Minister Unfazed By ICC Action

By Dion Michael

The Sports Minister, Navin Dissanayake, said on Friday that the International Cricket Council (ICC) must accept the nine-member Interim Committee that he appointed to run Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) .

The Minister was responding to an ICC media release which said that the ICC Board had decided to withhold financial payments to Sri Lanka pending clarification of the situation in the country. “We are a sovereign nation and we follow a set of rules and regulations when appointing such an Interim Committee. We have all the right to appoint an Interim Committee to run cricket in this country which is not illegal by any means. The ICC must accept this,” the minister said responding to the ICC claims.

Dissanayake stated that he had not received any letter from the ICC although the main body of world cricket had released a statement to the media.

“Up until now I have not received any communication from the ICC. We have taken a decision to go with an Interim Committee and we will stand by that. Having said that, if the ICC does want to hold discussions we are quite happy to talk to them regarding this matter,” he said.

The International Cricket Council on Thursday announced its intention to begin a dialogue with the government of Sri Lanka over the recent appointment of an Interim Committee to run Sri Lanka Cricket and its wish to “progress the issue constructively”.

In a statement issued after its regular meeting there was a reference to the situation in Sri Lanka which was one of the items that had been discussed at the meeting.

“The ICC Board today considered the implications of the appointment of an Interim Committee of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) by the Government of Sri Lanka and whether this may be a breach of the ICC’s constitution which requires free and fair elections for office-bearers within Member boards,” the statement said.

“After considerable discussion, and without making a final decision on the matter, the ICC Board supported a recommendation of the ICC Governance Review Committee that it should write to the Sports Minister of Sri Lanka seeking a full and proper explanation of its intervention that prima facie puts SLC in breach of the ICC’s constitution.  The Board further decided that, pending the satisfactory resolution of this matter, the next financial distribution due from the ICC to SLC will not be advanced to SLC and will, instead, be held in an escrow account,” the statement added.

“Notwithstanding the Board’s decision, Mr Nuski Mohamed – a nominee of the Interim Committee – was given the opportunity to provide information about the status of the Interim Committee, following which he was invited to attend the ICC Board meeting as an observer on behalf of the interests of cricket in Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, Mr Mohamed declined to attend the meeting on these terms and as a result there was no representative from Sri Lanka at the meeting.  The recent media comments of the Sri Lankan Sports Minister suggesting that the ICC was ‘colluding’ with former SLC officials were also noted and the ICC Board expressed its disappointment with the inaccurate nature of these comments. Moving forward the ICC hopes to progress this matter constructively with the Government of Sri Lanka for the good of all cricketing interests in Sri Lanka,” the statement concluded.

The ICC Board consists of the nominated representatives of each of the 10 Full Members plus three elected Associate Member representatives. The meeting is chaired by Narayanaswami Srinivasan. Also present is the ICC Chief Executive.

The Board also took up for discussion the recently concluded World Cup 2015, the resignation of ICC President Mustapha Kamal, cricket in the USA, a new ranking system for women’s cricket and new procedures for illegal bowling actions among a range of other administrative matters.
World Cup hosts Australia and New Zealand were congratulated on their successful staging of an event described by the ICC Chairman, Srinivasan as the ‘most popular in history’.

The ICC CWC 2015 set a new attendance record of 1.1 million spectators with 10 matches attended by crowds in excess of 40,000 and over 94,000 people attending the final.

It was broadcast by 44 licensees in seven languages across 220 territories and covered in the host countries by 1,210 rights holding media and 1385 non-rights holding media.

The event website attracted 36.1 million unique visitors accumulating 304 million page views and the official app attracted 4.51 million downloads, making it the number one ranked sports app in 48 countries.

The Board accepted the resignation of former President Kamal, effective from 2 April and confirmed that no replacement would be appointed for the remaining weeks of Mr Kamal’s term. The Full Council of the ICC will consider the appointment of Mr Najam Sethi as ICC President when it meets in Barbados at the end of June.

Following a report on recent correspondence and discussions between the ICC and the USA Cricket Association (USACA), the ICC Board decided that it was not satisfied that USACA is compliant with all of its obligations under the ICC membership criteria and constitution.

Revised procedures for dealing with bowlers reported with suspected illegal bowling actions were approved, including provisions that:
· shorten the turnaround time from a bowler being reported to the test results being announced (35 days reduced to 24 days); and
· enable the ICC to recognise suspensions from domestic competitions, as long as the bowler has been assessed by the Member using the ICC testing protocol at an ICC-accredited testing centre.

The Board meeting commenced with Srinivasan noting the immense contribution to the global game of the former Australia captain and iconic commentator Richie Benaud who passed away earlier this month.