By Ravi Ladduwahetty
World Cup 1996 winning Sri Lanka cricket captain and Kalutara District DNA parliamentarian Arjuna Ranatunga yesterday blamed President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sports Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage and Sri Lanka Cricket officials for the humiliation that Sri Lanka cricketers were going through in the current Indian Premier league.
"It is these three who are responsible for the current fiasco where Sri Lankan players are faced with the embarrassment of not being able to play in Chennai at the insistence of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram," Ranatunga told The Island last night.
Ranatunga, a veteran of 93 Tests and 269 One Day Internationals, having amassed 12,559 runs in both forms of the game, also said that the GOSL should have told the Indian Premier League organizers and franchisees that they should have pulled out the matches which were to be played in Chennai if they wanted the Sri Lankan players to participate in the tournament.
He also said that the decision of the government to allow the Lankan players to participate in the IPL was an endorsement and acceptance of Jayalilthaa’s and Karunanidhi’s allegations that there were war crimes in Sri Lanka in the final phase of the conflict.
"This is a government which always alleges that there are foreign powers and other conspiratorial forces attempting to destroy Sri Lanka, but it is the President, Sports Minister Mahindananda Alutgamamge and the Sri Lanka Cricket officials who have given credence to that allegation," Ranatunga charged.
"The Indian Premier League is a private franchise which is owned by frontline businessmen and artistes and it has nothing to do with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). That is all the more reason why the President and the Sports Minister should have spoken on behalf of our cricketers, without whom the total balance of the tournament would have swayed," he said.
Ranatunga also said that it would also not happen as the SLC officials would not advise them accordingly as they were a bunch of puppets who were hand in glove with BCCI officials.
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