Baduraliya Sports Club has filed a petition in the Court of Appeal against the Sports Minister over the removal of three clubs from the premier tier cricket tournament, club president Sumith Perera said.
Perera said the Sports Minister had notified three clubs, Baduraliya among them, that they would be demoted from the premier tier. That decision runs contrary to the constitution of the cricket governing body, he said.
The petition comes days after Baduraliya won the Inter-Club Premier Tier Women’s Cricket Championship last week.
Why a demotion is contested ground right now
Club tiering is not a routine administrative matter in Sri Lankan cricket at present. Sri Lanka Cricket has been run by a government-appointed Transformation Committee since April, after the previous executive committee under Shammi Silva resigned and the Sports Ministry took control of the board.
That committee’s draft constitution is now before the Legal Draftsman’s Department, awaiting Cabinet approval before it can be gazetted and put to Parliament. Among its proposals is a reduction in the number of clubs holding voting rights, from the current membership to 39. Which clubs sit in which tier therefore bears directly on who will be entitled to vote in the elected administration the reform is meant to produce.
The International Cricket Council requires SLC to return to a democratically elected administration and has barred SLC representatives from its board meetings while the committee is in place. Sri Lanka lost hosting rights to the inaugural ICC Women’s Champions Trophy in August over the dispute about government involvement in running the board.
What is not yet known
Hiru News did not name the two other demoted clubs, did not name the Sports Minister, and did not give a case number or a date for the matter to be supported in court. It also does not say whether the demotion applies to the men’s competition, the women’s competition in which Baduraliya has just won the title, or both — a distinction that determines how far the club’s grievance actually reaches.
No response from the Sports Ministry or from Sri Lanka Cricket had been reported at the time of writing, and no other verified newsroom had carried the story.
