Sri Lanka board defends Sumathipala's trip to Pakistan

Sri Lanka's cricket board has publicly defended its decision to send Thilanga Sumathipala to attend the ICC executive board meeting in Pakistan last weekend after Arjuna Ranatunga, Sri Lanka's former captain and current deputy minister, made a formal complaint to President Chandika Kumaratunga over the appointment, claiming it had damaged the image of Sri Lanka.

Sumathipala has long been Sri Lanka's most influential and powerful cricket administrator, holding office for three terms as board president, but recent controversy over his alleged involvement in a passport scandal also involving a mafia kingpin called Dammika Amarasinghe, who allegedly travelled to England to watch the 1999 World Cup as a guest of the cricket board on a forged passport, had led to him taking a more back-seat role.

However, earlier in the year at the board's annual general meeting, Sumathipala had been proposed and accepted as Sri Lanka's international envoy. He turned down the position at the time because he was in police custody, but his release on bail prompted the cricket board executive committee to request that he travel to Lahore for what was an important meeting for Sri Lankan cricket.

"The executive committee of Sri Lanka Cricket, at their meeting held in Kandy on October 2, unanimously decided to nominate Mr Sumathipala to attend the ICC executive board meeting in Lahore in the greater interest of Sri Lanka Cricket and respecting the endorsement of the general membership," said a media release. "It is a cardinal principle of natural justice that a person is innocent until he is proven guilty.

"A three-member bench of the Court of Appeal, having been apprised of the importance of Mr Sumathipala attending this particular ICC meeting, where certain important issues concerning Sri Lanka Cricket were to be discussed, granted approval for him to attend," the release added. "Mr Sumathipala, having attended the ICC meeting, dealt with those important issues very successfully."