What lies beneath Sri Lanka cricket’s convoluted suspension saga?

ICC'S suspension of the SLC is ostensibly to set cricket right in the country, but layers of political intrigue and power plays underpin the crisis.

When parsing situations as complex and dynamic as Sri Lanka Cricket's current suspension from the ICC, it is helpful to attempt to pin down the main actors' motivations.

People in power rarely spell these out.

But plenty can be surmised from their actions and their timing, the emphases and content of their public comments, as well as from their histories.

A lot of this is circumstantial evidence. But in this case, there is a lot of it.

At the heart of it, SLC's suspension is really a political tangle masquerading as a cricket crisis. Let's work backwards, peeling back a layer at a time.

The most recent actor in this vortex of cricket and politics is Sri Lanka's president Ranil Wickremesinghe, who on November 27 sacked sports minister Roshan Ranasinghe, whom SLC officials had been feuding with for a year. It was Ranasinghe's interference in SLC matters that supposedly precipitated SLC's “suspension” by the ICC, so the president's sacking of Ranasinghe was ostensibly to set SLC back on the path as an ICC Full Member, correct? Well, it's not that simple.

For more than two weeks after SLC was suspended, Wickremesinghe did not move to sack, or even censure, this cabinet minister.

The president made no moves against Ranasinghe when the ICC announced Sri Lanka had lost hosting rights to the Under19 Men's World Cup, on November 21, either.

In fact, this sacking only came hours after Ranasinghe (who belongs to a different political party from the president), accused Wickremesinghe and one of his senior aides of possibly moving to physically harm him, in parliament.

Ranasinghe was promptly sacked not only as sports minister but also relieved of his other portfolios - youth affairs, and irrigation.

A cynical reading might claim that President Wickremesinghe only sacked Ranasinghe when he became a nuisance to him personally.

Or maybe the timing was mere coincidence, and Wickremesinghe was truly looking out for the state of cricket, by far the best-loved sport in the country over which he presides.

On November 21, the ICC board issued a release confirming that Sri Lanka would no longer host next year's U-19 Men's World Cup.

At the same time, it announced Sri Lanka would be allowed to play bilateral cricket despite the suspension.

After all, the ICC's board is allowed under its Articles of Association (section 2.10) to make a suspension mean whatever it deems fit, however hollow that renders the term.

In the release announcing the suspension itself, on November 10, the ICC said only that SLC was in “serious breach” in the matter of managing “its affairs autonomously . . . (with) no government interference in the governance|.

This was in the week Sri Lanka's sports minister sacked Sri Lanka Cricket's entire board and replaced it with an interim committee.

So this is the ICC acting in the interests of the global game, right? No governments can be allowed to intrude on the running of cricket, and the ICC is voraciously defending the game in all its territories.

After all, in section 2.4(D) of its Articles of Association, the ICC requires that its members manage their affairs “autonomously and ensure there is no government interference . . .” Well, it's not quite that simple.

When the ICC put in place its suspension, it was Sri Lanka Cricket's ICC-ratified elected office bearers who were actually in power, and not the government's committee.

In fact, these officials had only ever been out of power for about 24 hours, having much earlier in the week been reinstated by Sri Lanka's judiciary via a stay order on the sports minister's installation of the interim committee.

As the judiciary is an arm of the Sri Lankan government, the government had, in essence, itself checked what it deemed a potential overreach of the executive branch.

Four weeks later, SLC president Shammi Silva and his fellow office bearers remain in place as heads of the nation's cricket admin

istration.

The ICC's suspension of SLC, and its subsequent taking away of the U-19 World Cup hosting rights is essentially because of a roughly 24-hour period in which Silva and Co. were ousted.

Since the passing of Sri Lanka's sports law in 1973, every national squad that Sri Lanka has ever named, has had to be ratified by the nation's sports minister.

Although unusual, it is certainly not unheard of, even in the last ten years, for ministers to flex their muscle on matters of selection.

The ICC has never suspended Sri Lanka over this practice, despite that very section of its Articles of Association stating explicitly that “selection and management of teams” is a process in which government cannot interfere.

And though the ICC sent its deputy chair, Imran Khwaja, to Sri Lanka in July to look into possible government interference, Khwaja arrived at the invitation of SLC's officials, and is understood to not have found serious evidence that would warrant a suspension at the time.

It is possible, of course, that the ICC has only recently begun to take this dim a view of government interference, and aims to be a body that acts with diligence and consistency.

And that its actions have all been in service of the health of the game in Sri Lanka.

On November 15, Sri Lanka Cricket initiated a defamation lawsuit against sports minister Ranasinghe, claiming that “in response to (is) persistent and damaging defamatory statements . . . SLC has taken a decisive step to protect its reputation and integrity”. — Espncricinfo