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Change Your Life! |
Sri Lanka's cricket board resigns |
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News |
June 3, 2000
COLOMBO, JUNE 2 (AP) - The Sri Lankan cricket board resigned en masse Friday, plunging the country's most popular sports body into a new crisis.
"We are concerned that the authorities appear to be taking Sri Lankan cricket down the path of destruction," Rienzi Wijetilleke, chairman of the board, said after resigning.
Since its establishment last year, the seven-member board has often clashed with Sri Lanka's powerful sports minister, S.B. Dissanayake. Cricket officials have accused Dissanayake of interference in the board's day to day functioning.
"After giving of our best over the last year, we could not stay and watch," said Wijetilleke, a banker by profession.
It was not immediately known if the resignation will effect this month's tour by Pakistan who is scheduled to play a three-test series against Sri Lanka and then stay on for a triangular one-day with South Africa.
Sri Lankan cricket went into its first major crisis last year when the executive committee, headed by the then president, Thilanga Sumathipala, was suspended following a court dispute over the election of officials. The case is still being heard.
Elections for new officials are to be held on June 11. Dissanayake postponed them earlier this year following allegations of financial irregularities.
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