Sumathipala denies betting on IPL

Sep 06, 2010 |

Colombo

Tags:

Former chairman of the Sri Lankan cricket board T. Sumathipala on Monday rejected Arjuna Ranatunga's allegations that he was involved in placing bets on Indian Premier League matches and threatened to sue the World Cup winning ex-captain.

Reacting to reports quoting Ranatunga, Sumathipala said contrary to the allegations, he has been working against illegal bookmakers. "I am one person who is fighting against illegal bookmakers. If Arjuna has said this, I will sue him and I will take him on because that man and Arvinda de Silva's name was categorically mentioned in the CBI report during the Hansie Cronje episode," Sumathipala said.

"He was among the six people named by the CBI. So, he is trying to save his face now," he added. Ranatunga and de Silva were accused of being involved in fixing 1994 Test against India but they were cleared of the charges by the International Cricket Council.

Indian bookmaker Mukesh Gupta had claimed that Ranatunga, then the Sri Lankan captain, had agreed to play badly in the Test against India at Lucknow in 1994 and De Silva had received 10,000 pounds after the game.

However, Desmond Fernando, appointed by the Sri Lankan board to investigate the allegation, recommended that no action be taken in a report which concluded that the evidence against the players was "inadequate and untested".

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/31619" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-0aa08477beae65c30a0d0c9faa45e34f" value="form-0aa08477beae65c30a0d0c9faa45e34f" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="89438725" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>