“I Swear Upon My Children, We Never Got Any Pressure From The President”

NR: I think it was over Rs. 5 billion. But I can’t be sure it may have gone up to Rs. 7 billion. This is only a rough estimate I am giving you.  As I said before I don’t have the final figures.

Q: If as you say you were not pressured into building a brand new cricket stadium at Hambantota on what basis was Sooriyawewa chosen? Why could you not have developed the existing stadium in Dambulla?

NR: First I’ll give you an outline of how we got into the place and… this background information is a little vital. We took over office in 2009, April. At the time most of the planning for the World Cup 2011 was not in the books. We had to host 8 matches and we had a 350 million minus bank deficit with the bank when we took over office. So what happened was as soon as we took over office we had to work for the WC 2011, we were supposed to host 8 games in 2 venues. Then, due to the Pakistani issue, we got 4 extra matches. As a result we had to build another stadium for that. When we analysed the situation in terms of where to build, we had only one ground which had all the facilities upto about 60% to host a world cup event, and that was Sooriyawewa. We had to have a ground that fell in line with  guidelines issued by the ICC; 30,000 seating, a capacity to hold 400 media personnel… these were some of the guidelines. So to accommodate that, when we looked at the grounds available, we had Kettarama, leased to us, owned by the government. Then we had Pallekele; though the Cricket Board had spent money 4 years back, not a single bowler has bowled on those grounds, being such an important area for cricket. Therefore, we took a decision to rebuild that as well. Then when we looked at the third venue…

Q: Who owns Pallekele?

NR: The Cricket board owns it. The grounds are on a government lease. Then when we look at the third option. And that was Dambulla. However Dambulla, from (2008) up to the WC we had about 14 international matches to be played in Sri Lanka and those 14 one-days we had to play in a place where you have lights. That’s an agreement signed by SLC before we took over, with TenSports. So, if we had wanted to develop Dambulla, we had to do the same thing that we had done with Pallakale, we had to spend at least one and a half years to get it done and we would have lost 50%-60% of revenue that was promised by the broadcaster because we could not have then used the ground. So we had to take a decision where to build.

Q: So are you saying that it was more feasible to actually build a new stadium at Sooriyawewa, rather than develop an existing one at 1/4th the cost?

NR: No, that’s not the case. We would have lost a lot of money if we had not played, if we had not kept Dambulla for our bilateral one day games.

Q: Who owns Suriyawewa?

NR: Sri Lanka Cricket.  The land was sold to us by the BOI.

Q: What is the cost per annum into maintaining that stadium?

NR: About Rs. 1.5 million.

Q: So is it being maintained currently by Sri Lanka Cricket?

NR: Yes. By Sri Lanka Cricket.

Q: What does it cost to maintain the others?

NR: Also, Rs. 1.5 million each every month.

Q: There was a huge controversy around the sale of tickets for the World Cup matches held in Sri Lanka. Was there an internal investigation done by SLC on this subject? If not, why?

NR: No. What could we do? We took best precautions. We advertised detailing the days we would be selling tickets. We were very open in that aspect. But at the time we advertised we would not have sold even 20% at the time.  The success of people actually coming for the matches was only after Sri Lanka qualified for the semi finals. Initially, there not more than 50 people in a queue to buy tickets.

Q: But Suraj Dandeniya claimed to me that “thousands” of people queued to purchase World Cup tickets?

NR: That is not correct.

Q: But why were not all those three wheeler drivers who were openly flogging tickets at black market prices not stopped?

NR: How can we stop? It’s not our job to do that.

Q: According to ICC guidelines there was to be an audit on all aspects of the World Cup. Has this audit been performed for Sri Lanka? If so by whom was it done?

NR: An audit is due. It is to be performed soon. By whom we have not been informed yet by the ICC.

Q: Is it true that some staff of SLC have not received their salaries owing to the present financial crisis?

NR: That is not correct. They have all been paid.

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