Sri Lanka Cricket witnesses another resignation as Aruna de Silva leaves

In recent news, Sri Lanka hasn’t quite grabbed the headlines for the right reasons. Their misery on the field has translated into off-field drama as Aruna de Silva, the Tour Operations Manager has decided to part ways with Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC). According to media reports, Shammi Silva and Aruna had a verbal exchange of words over the pending bills, and since he did not agree with Shammi’s way, he decided to take the step to stay away from SLC. Since he is scared of audit queries, he decided to parted ways.

It indicates that he has decided to leave for good since he has been asked to sign all bills relating to the Zimbabwe and Indian tour. De Silva was last seen during the 5th ODI at R. Premadasa when he was on the podium to present the awards as an employee of the SLC. Apparently, he did not seem to like the way the bills had been presented by the Treasurer without proper evaluations and required quotations for which he and Ashley de Silva, the CEO of SLC will be held responsible once the Internal Audit takes place.

Domestic match fixing scandal

According to Cricket Age, this isn’t the only problem haunting Aruna. The Executive Committee is to meet tomorrow to decide on the domestic match fixing scandal report, where he too has played a major role in both Clubs fixing the match.

Aruna came into SLC as a member elected to the Executive Committee and later made way for Priyantha Zoysa after his appointment as tour operation Manager. Under his supervision, the Under 19 Asia Cup, The Women’s ICC qualifier, Bangladesh National tour, Zimbabwe tour and the India tour was conducted. Aruna also played a major role in handling the match ticket for all the tours with the Indian Company, “Book my Show”.

He was one of the key players in Thilanga Sumathipala’s political campaign and SLC’s election campaign. Though, finally, Aruna has indicated that he would prefer to stay away now that all of Thilanga’s and Shammi’s deeds will be in the open. Even when he was at the SLC, he was also operating his own company, as the Chairman/Managing Director at A & D K Logistics Pvt Ltd. It was a serious case of conflict of interest which indicates how Sumathipala has been running SLC like his private company.