da esoccer bet： Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) have denied reporting match referee Chris Broad tothe ICC for ‘boozing’ with Australia’s players during the recent series.Mohan de Silva, the president of SLC, claims that he was misquoted by a reporterfrom the state-run
Charlie Austin26-Apr-2004
Chris Broad: cleared of allegations that, it now turns out, were never even made© AFP
Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) has denied reporting match referee Chris Broad tothe ICC for “boozing” with Australia’s players during the recent series.Mohan de Silva, the president of SLC, claims that he was misquoted by a reporterfrom the state-run Sunday Observer newspaper.In an open letter to the journalist, de Silva said: “I have noted that youby error have made a reference to me with regards to the claim that matchreferee Chris Broad was found boozing with the Australian players. I wish tostate that at no time did I confirm this story and neither has Sri LankaCricket reported any incident involving Mr. Broad and Australian players tothe ICC. As such it is clear that I have been misquoted in the said story.”De Silva’s comments follow a terse statement from the ICC last week: “Theallegations attributed to Sri Lanka Cricket are serious and significant yetthere is not one piece of evidence offered to support them,” said MalcolmSpeed, the ICC’s chief executive. “There are no specifics – no places, nodates, no times – and it is disappointing that a national board would electto make disparaging comments about an ICC match official without providingany material to support these comments.The newspaper allegations came within the context of Broad’s reporting ofMuttiah Muralitharan’s doosra, a decision that promoted outrage and chargesof racial bias in some quarters, but was later justified as biomechanicaltests showed that Muralitharan’s arm straightened by double the legal limit.Sri Lanka Cricket has faced increasing criticism for its handling of theissue, including the treatment of Broad and the partial leaking of theMuralitharan report to the Sunday Times newspaper, which forced the ICC intomaking a statement on Muralitharan’s doosra even before receiving theofficial report.