Ministry hearing on suspended cricketers and official raises eyebrows

The decision of the Sports Ministry to hear pleas of three former cricketers and a cricket board employee over what they called “unjust” suspension on allegations of corruption had opened up a debate with some arguing the ministry has no jurisdiction over matters concerning the International Cricket Council - the global body investigating the charges.

Cricketers Avishka Gunawardana, Nuwan Zoysa and Dilhara Lokuhettige - and the video analyst Sanath Jayasundara appeared before a Sports Ministry appointed panel on Thursday pleading to clear their names over the allegations of corruption.

Three out of the four accused appeared before the committee on Thursday at the first hearing along with their l e g al counsel Chrismal Warnasuriya and had briefed the panel about the legality of the ban and jurisdiction under which the bans have been imposed.

The ICC Anti- Corruption Unit was surprised by Sports Ministry’s decision to hold an inquiry and is likely to discuss the same with Sports Minister Dullas Allahapperuma this week, an ICC source confirmed.

“ICC is not bound by the governments. They have all the right to investigate match fixing and corruption,” an ICC official said.

All three cricketers are charged with directly or indirectly soliciting, inducing, enticing, instructing, persuading, encouraging or intentionally facilitating any participant to breach the Code. They are also accused of not reporting corrupt practices to the ACU who were deployed by the ICC on the request of the Emirates Cricket Board ( ECB) which hosted the 2017 edition of the T10 League in UAE.

The ECB organised the T10 League 2017 with approval of the ICC. The world governing body granted ECB sanctioning rights to organise the exclusive event in accordance with the ICC’s event sanctioning regulations in force at that time. The ICC, however, had no role in assigning and contracting the umpires and match referees. It provided anti-corruption services to the event on ECB’s request.

The Sri Lankan trio has maintained their innocence ever since the ICC framed the charges. The suspensions particularly left Gunawardena and Zoysa in limbo as their employer let them both go pending the investigations by the parent body.

They made an appeal to Michael Beloff QC, Chair of the ICC Code of Conduct Commission but he dismissed the trio’s challenge to jurisdiction and declined to lift the provisional suspensions issued on them, forcing them to seek redress in higher forums.

Following the dismissal of their appeal they lodged an appeal with the Geneva- based Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) but are yet to pay the fees to proceed with the case. This has delayed ICC’s investigation process.

Jayasundara has no match fixing charges but remained suspended after former Sports Minister Harin Fernando claimed Jayasundara attempted to bribe him to include a player into the team.