Sri Lanka Cricket approved a set of constitutional amendments at a Special General Meeting held on Monday that opens the way for the board to directly undertake contract-based business ventures, including cricket ground construction and housing projects. The meeting, convened at a Colombo luxury hotel, proceeded despite mounting criticism of the SLC leadership and calls for its top office-bearers to step aside.
Colts Cricket Club, one of the country’s oldest, has written a formal letter to the SLC administration objecting to the proposals on governance grounds. The club says the amendments hand the Executive Committee and office-bearers “extensive” authority to enter contracts, form partnerships and execute projects without financial ceilings or mandatory member approval at key decision-making stages.
Colts has asked SLC to incorporate clear financial limits and compulsory member-approval checkpoints before the proposals are adopted in full. The club also flagged that some of the project plans run well beyond cricket itself, extending into tourism and hospitality — areas Colts says are inconsistent with a cricket administration’s core objectives.
Echoes of an earlier project
The letter cites the 2017 “Cricket University” initiative — for which SLC released Rs. 50 million — as a cautionary example. That project was later renamed a High-Performance Centre after the Higher Education Ministry withheld approval for the “university” branding, and more than six years later the structure remains incomplete despite multiple tranches of floor-by-floor funding.
The intervention lands during a sharp decline in on-field performance that has already seen fitness-test controversies and court action by former Test bowler Nuwan Thushara over the IPL NOC dispute. Critics argue the SLC board is expanding into commercial real estate at precisely the moment Sri Lankan cricket most needs cost discipline and focus on playing results.
SLC did not publicly respond to the Colts letter.
