Afghanistan thumps Sri Lanka by 7 wickets
A day after losing to Afghanistan, the Minister of Sports Roshan Ranasinghe revealed that Sri Lanka Cricket pays its foreign English cricket coach Chris Silverwood as much as 30,000 US dollars a month or equivalent to Rs. 100 lakhs as an income.
The figures were revealed by the Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe who is still struggling to clean up corruption and heavy spending without accountability at Sri Lanka Cricket.
That is the monthly salary of Silverwood, paid to him by Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) for his coaching services, and on Monday his team was comprehensively beaten by the underdog Afghanistan in a World Cup match in Pune, India.
Reported to be paid a whopping sum of US $ 14,000 a month, despite having no prior experience in coaching a national men’s side
Sri Lanka Cricket also pays former captain Mahela Jayawardena 20,000 US dollars for his services as consultant and 14,000 US dollars for batting coach Naveed Nawaz.
Pockets a cool sum of US $ 20,000 a month
Most of these appointments were made when former Sri Lankan cricketer and businessman Aravinda De Silva was the Chairman of the Technical Advisory Committee. It is also a known fact that huge sums of commissions are made by agents and sub-agents when professionals are recruited into such posts.
Sri Lanka Cricket has one of the largest, if not the largest backstage team, at the current World Cup and in total SLC pays as much as Rs 41 million for a month in local currency from its coffers to maintain as many as nine persons for behind-the-scenes work.
Minister of Sports Roshan Ranasinghe has earned a reputation of being a blabber, as his words and deeds don’t match
However, like he has been doing in the recent past Minister Ranasinghe has not been able to match his words with deeds and went a step further by asking SLC officials to resign after this loss to Afghanistan.
“They have no moral right to continue running the affairs of Sri Lanka Cricket taking into account the Probe Report against them over financial misdeeds committed during the T20 World Cup in Australia last October-November,” he said. “If there is a law, they (cricket officials) will spend ten years in jail for corrupt activities.”