“We lost good opportunity to host the Asia Cup in Sri Lanka but at the meantime we have to satisfied with hosting rights of this event belongs to us and finally awarded to the UAE”, said Sri Lanka cricket Secretary Mohan de Silva yesterday at the press briefing held at the Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) Board room.
The Secretary of the SLC further said we knew this is very unfortunate situation at the country. “We tried to host this event in Sri Lanka but most importantly at least we can get 2.5 million US dollars from Asian Cricket Council (ACC) as hosting fare while other revenue share with 2.5 USD million to altogether more than 6 million US dollars for the country at this hard period”. ACC also plan to give money for each participating countries for this event and that countries are expecting full security. “However I am very happy we had finish very successful two series against Australia and Pakistan and gave good message to all. Our President Shammi Silva made a good effort to get this chance and SLC was ready to conduct this event and all hopes are over now but we can satisfied as we can get more chance to host ICC and ACC tournaments in future”.
“Actually until the last moment we had discussions with ACC officials as well as UAE board members to try hard to get this hosting rights to our country. However due to present country’ s situation and due to the postpone of the Lanka Premier League (LPL) third edition paved the way to miss this hosting opportunity,” added Mohan de Silva the Secretary of SLC.
Actually now UAE cricket Board will conduct this event while broadcast right owned by ACC directly not happy to host this event due to security reasons. Our Present Government headed by President Ranil Wickramasinghe and Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe were given their best effort to get this chance but during the last discussion at the ICC meeting held at Bermingham in last July 28 ACC officials given their final decision to give this event to the UAE.
“we tried to do our best to get this event to our country and if we get that chance we could easily get more dollars at this stage. However some media reports pointed out wrong picture about our country and very sad to say some section of the country pointed out wrong picture to ACC and ICC officials and these are very unfortunate issues at this moment”.
“We had plans to conduct two T – 20 matches against India before the Asia Cup and now we missed that chance due to change of the venue. If we will host India T 20 matches it could be very good income for SLC and the country,” said Mohan de Silva.
The CEO of the SLC Ashley de Silva pointed out from the Asia Cup revenue generated goes to ACC. They give 2.5 US million dollars to us while 1.5 US dollar million get from the ticket sales income.
Especially ACC is expected to get good income from ticket collection and that’s why they are more concern to get good crowd and unfortunately our present situation in the country effected to missed this chance. Actually this Asia Cup originally planned to host in Pakistan and due to security reasons we got that chance.
Sri Lanka cricket is plan to conduct T- 20 invitational cricket tournament at the R. Premadasa International cricket stadium from August 9 to 16 and that will be open gate for all spectators and hope to give live telecast from local TV channel and this is going to be good news for our spectators, said SLC CEO Ashley de Silva. Meanwhile both Secretary and CEO of SLC are expected to leave UAE today to discuss with UAE cricket board.
by Daily News Sri Lanka
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