Another fish in troubled waters
London/Colombo, Sept. 10: The Sri Lankan cricket board stood by the Dilshan. The board spokesman Brian Thomas, “A far as we are concerned, there is no allegations against Dilshan. If there were allegations, by now the ICC would have informed us and a proper inquiry would have been held. As far as Sri Lanka Cricket is concerned, can I call it character assassination. We know our players are innocent.”
Sri Lankan captain Kumar Sangakkara also jumped to Dilshan's defence and said none of his team-mates were suspected of “fraternising with shady characters”.
“All these stories going around about Dilshan are absolutely baseless. No Sri Lankan player to my knowledge is in suspicion of fraternising with these so called bookies by their team-mates nor by team management and Sri Lanka Cricket Board. As far as I know there was no report to SLC or ICC’s Anti-corruption Unit,” Sangakkara said.
The Daily Mail had reported that Sri Lankan team manager filed a report to ICC’s ACSU after Sangakkara informed him about suspicions among team-mates that Dilshan had been seen with the bookie during the Twenty20 World Cup in England in June last year.
Sangakkara refuted it and said he had never passed any such information to the management. “I have never reported against any player specifically. All the players are very open in communicating with me and team management. No one including me have voiced our suspicion over any of our team-mates at any time nor reported specifically to the team manager or SLC,” he asserted.
“If there is any report of any suspicion on any player, then it is better to ask the SLC and the team management about that but as far as I know ,there is no such thing,” he told a popular news channel.
The Sri Lankan skipper also ruled out any Sri Lankan player intentionally mixing up with illegal bookmakers. “Any of the players upto my knowledge have not fraternised with any of these shady characters. The only thing is you never know who is sitting at the chair next to you or who is taking photograph with you at a hotel or somewhere,” Sangakkara said.
SLC chief executive Ajith Jayasekara also dismissed reports of Dilshan being under ICC scanner.
“We dont go by speculation or what any newspaper wants to say. We don’t want to go by such reports. The Anti corruption Unit of the ICC has not reported any such involvement of any player. We cant go by speculation. This has not been brought to our notice by the anti-corruption unit of the ICC. There is no evidence against any Sri Lankan player,” Jayasekara said.
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