Canagaretnam bids farewell to SLBF
Rtd DIG Ignatius Canagaretnam senior vice president of the Sri Lanka Basketball Federation bid farewell to the federation at the last AGM held on Saturday 233-13. In an emotional speech delivered by him, he traced his association with the SLBF since the year 1990 when he was chairman of the Police Basketball Committee from that year he served in the executive committee of the SLBF. He was elected as the president of the SLBF in the year 1994 a position he held till 1998. From 1999 he served as the vice president and senior vice president of the SLBF.
In the year 1994 the SARC countries formed the SABA (South Asian Basketball Association) and the inaugural meeting was held in Lahore Pakistan where he was elected the senior vice president of the SABA. In the same year he was elected to the central board of the then Asian Basketball Confederation. He continued to be elected to this position till 2011 when he opted to stand down. By that time the ABC was renamed FIBA Asia (Federation of International Bas- ketball Association) Asia. Incidentally he was the first Sri Lankan to have been elected to this body.
He was the representative of the SLBF in the National Olympic Committee of Sri Lanka from 1994 to date except for a year or two In the year 2000 the ABC (Asian Basketball Confederation) awarded him a recognition award for his contribution towards the development of the game of basketball. This ceremony was held at the Hilton Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
In his farewell speech he said that he took this decision based on two important factors.
The primary being the induction of young blood in to the SLBF and secondly his age factor. He thanked the president of SLBF Sarath Ekanayake chief minister central province and all those in the outgoing and incoming executive committee for their unstinted support given to him during his 23 years of service to the SLBF.It was indeed a sad farewell
Canagaretnam is a product of St. Michael’s College Batticaloa, well known for basketball