http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sri-Lanka-c758 sports ministry to investigate the SLPL deal - Cricket News Update
The Sports minister of Sri Lanka Mahindananda Aluthgamage has ordered a top level probe into a deal between the country’s cricket board and a http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Somerset-c843 Entertainment Ventures, which led to the termination of the country’s domestic
Twenty20 tournament, the Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL).
For the investigation purpose, the sports minister has appointed a top level committee that would be headed by a former police chief. Others included in the probe committee is the Director General of sports, a prominent sports administrator, a civil servant
and the legal officer of the governing body of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC).
A sports ministry official told media reporters that the COPE committee of Parliament has agreed that the contract with the SEV (Somerset Entertainment Ventures) has caused financial losses to cricket in the country.
"There were queries made at the COPE committee in the Parliament that agreement with Somerset Entertainment Ventures had caused losses to SLC,” said the Sri Lanka Sports Ministry official said today. “So the minister wants it probed," he added further.
COPE is Sri Lankan parliament’s committee for public enterprises. In the last meeting of COPE, Sri Lankan Cricket (SLC) was shown as one of the loss making bodies in the country.
The board had last year planned a Twenty20 league, parallel to the Indian Premier League but it ran into problems after the Board of Control for Cricket in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750 refused to send its players to participate in the Sri Lankan Premier League.
Short on finances, the Sri Lankan board then converted it into a domestic tournament last year, hoping to revive the league by August this year, with foreign players also featuring in the tournament.
Well placed sources from inside the SLC have revealed that the second edition of the SLPL will have foreign players.
Meanwhile, the BCCI authorities have agreed to send the Indian players to play in the once abandoned Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL).
"India might have raised concerns before but we have talked to BCCI and settled all those issues," Upali Dharmadasa, the president of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), had told the media reporters.
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