For years, changing the way Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) is run has been talked about by politicians, administrators, cricketers and fans. Committees were appointed, reports were written and recommendations were made, but little came of them. President Counsel Dinal Phillips, a member of the Cricket Transformation Committee (CTC) who headed the drafting of the new [...]
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For years, changing the way Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) is run has been talked about by politicians, administrators, cricketers and fans. Committees were appointed, reports were written and recommendations were made, but little came of them.
President Counsel Dinal Phillips, a member of the Cricket Transformation Committee (CTC) who headed the drafting of the new constitution, believes this time could be different.
President’s Counsel Dinal Phillips addresses media.
“A very big thank you to the President of the Republic and the Minister for Sports who took this whole decision to change the constitution of Sri Lanka Cricket,” Phillips said in an interview with the Sunday Times .
“Until now, no Head of State went through with this. They only paid lip service to it. So it is a gigantic step in the right direction.”
But the story did not start with the Transformation Committee.
Phillips goes back several years and remembers the work of cricket enthusiast Mahendra Mapagunaratne, a lawyer residing in Canada, who quietly helped bring together the people and information needed to start the process. Mapagunaratne, who works with an NGO and is a keen follower of cricket, became interested in what had happened in India, where the country’s cricket administration had faced a major legal challenge and subsequently gone through constitutional changes.
“He wanted to model that on Sri Lanka, to model it on those lines,” Phillips said.
He then started putting people together.
“He himself set about finding people from different strata to come in, including administrators, lawyers, judges of the Supreme Court and diplomats.”
Phillips was among those brought into the group.
“I was very happy that I was also part of that team,” he said.
The group eventually became involved in a legal challenge against the existing structure of Sri Lanka Cricket.Mapagunaratne also did much of the groundwork behind the scenes, collecting constitutions and other documents from cricket boards around the world.
“All that was provided by him. He provided those old international constitutions of all the full-member countries,” Phillips said.
He also used his contacts to obtain information from people with experience in international cricket administration.
“He, in fact, provided us the contact to David Becker, the former head of the ICC who joined us in the drafting process.”
The effort, however, did not bring immediate change. Sri Lanka Cricket filed objections and the case moved slowly. Then came the political upheaval of 2022, followed by another attempt to reform the cricket administration.
Phillips recalls that then Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe and Arjuna Ranatunga, who was heading the National Sports Council, also believed the constitution needed to change. A committee was appointed and produced a report, but once again the process stalled.
There were other attempts too, with committees studying the issue and stakeholders being consulted.
He believes the present process finally moved forward because the Government decided to take the issue seriously.
“If not for the intervention of the President, this would not have come to us,” he said.
One of the main issues addressed in the new constitution is the voting system. Phillips has little doubt that the existing structure has been a major problem.
“A huge bane in this whole system was the voting structure,” he said.
The new arrangement seeks to give a clearer role to the major clubs and provinces and reduce the influence of what have often been described as paper clubs. Not all ICC members have a vote. Only 43 associates out of 99 and 12 full members have the right to vote.
Another major change is the introduction of seven independent directors, chosen through a nominations process involving people from professional backgrounds.
Phillips believes this is important because running a national cricket board with an annual turnover of Rs. 16bn is no longer simply a matter for cricket administrators.
“You need people with sound accounting backgrounds, legal expertise, marketing and IT knowledge involved in running your cricket board,” he said.
He also wants the Board and the professional administration to have clearly defined roles.
“We took the first step in saying that professionals must come into running Sri Lanka Cricket,” Phillips said.
“Contracts have to be looked at. Television agreements have to be done. Licensing agreements have to be done. There is a lot of work to be done. We can advise. The CEO runs it.”
In simple terms, Phillips wants the elected Board to concentrate on policy and oversight while professional executives take care of the daily running of SLC.
But he does not believe a new constitution by itself will solve Sri Lanka’s cricket problems the new constitution will be judged by what happens on the cricket field.
Much more needs to be done at school and club levels. Phillips supports the move towards four-day domestic cricket, saying young players need more time to learn how to bat long innings, bowl long spells and find a way back into a match after a bad start.
Phillips believes Sri Lanka has enough talent in schools and clubs, but has not done enough to turn that talent into international-quality players.
“The present team ranking is not acceptable at all and some very hard decisions will have to be taken,” he said.
That is why he sees the constitutional changes as only the first step. There have been too many committees and too many promises of change for the public to be satisfied with another document.
Phillips knows there is still a long way to go. The proposed legislation must pass through Parliament and could face legal challenges before the new system becomes a reality.
But after years of failed attempts, he believes the country has finally taken a meaningful step.
“We have taken the first step,” he said.
The real test now is whether the new system can deliver what Sri Lankan cricket has been missing for years: better administration, better development and, ultimately, better cricketers.
Print Edition – The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka
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