COLOMBO, Dec 26: A series of poor administrative decisions over the past many months cost former Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga his high-profile job as head of interim cricket committee at SLC this week, it was revealed on Friday.

It is understood that the final decision to remove Ranatunga was taken when he finalised an order to fire 16 staff members of SLC which forced Sports Minister Gamini Lokuge to step in and cancel the sackings.

This followed the equally embarrassing situation when it was known that the team had lost its main sponsorship along with that of a clothing apparel manufacturer. Although tenders were called, the team’s sponsor, a popular Sri Lanka tea brand had lost interest, as there was no longer any transparency in the boardroom.

Lokuge told the Daily Mirror that he had no alternative but to remove the former Sri Lanka captain after a series of such controversial moves. “Ranatunga has not been cooperating with the company or the players,” Lokuge was quoted as saying: “We tried to sort it out but could not and he had to be removed.”

It has been further revealed that that not all members of the Interim Committee were told of the Pakistan tour plan and that Ranatunga and an ‘inner clique of his close friends’ including a shadowy character Guy de Alwis, who has been Ranatunga’s proxy at several meetings involving the committee charged with running the 2011 World Cup. De Alwis was tasked by Ranatunga to visit Bangladesh, which did not have the approval of Lokuge.

De Alwis has now been summoned to return from Bangladesh by the new committee regulator, S Liyanagama. No longer a part of the Interim Committee, De Alwis is also unlikely to be one of those expected to be retained when the new committee is formed.The government mouthpiece, the Daily News, said that Ranatunga accepted the decision but shied away from making a direct comment on the ugly saga. “I only wanted to make the SLC a clean place and serve cricketers. I did not go there to do any politics.”Colombo cricket circles have been awash for several weeks predicting the downfall of the Ranatunga regime with January 13 as a date for a change in SLC leadership. Most of the Premier League clubs have been agitating since the end of the India tour at the end of August for board elections. Many club officials have argued that the Ranatunga regime has worked an agenda of revenge for the aftermath of the country’s World Cup debacle in England in 1999.

There is a chance as well that the new interim committee of the SLC will this time be a short one as Lokuge has intimated he is considering calling for board elections in March. It is more than three and a half years since the government ejected the last board on grounds of financial corruption.

At this stage, Sri Lanka’s proposed tour of Pakistan in January- February 2009 as a replacement for the cancelled India trip, is not affected. There are also concerns though that there were ulterior motives behind Ranatunga’s ready acceptance to tour, one is the funding available through the TV rights for the three Tests, ODIs and T20 games which amount to US$1.24 million.

However, Graeme Labrooy, secretary of the Sri Lanka Cricket Players’ Association, is reported in the Daily Mirror on Thursday saying that Mehala Jayawardene and the rest of the side had no ‘safety concerns about touring Pakistan and the tour was very much on.—Agencies