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The Tournament Committee of the Sri Lanka Schools Cricket Association has turned down an appeal made by Joseph Vaz College to replay the Inter School Under-15 Division I quarter final match which was played without the Duckworth-Lewis forecasts being given to the teams at the CCC Grounds last Saturday.
Joseph Vaz College authorities made a request that the match replayed citing that the unavailability of DL forecasts kept them unaware of the target at different stages of the match and thus they were meted out an injustice. The match against De Mazenod College ended without the full quota of overs being bowled due to rain. De Mazenod College was declared winners according to the Duckworth Lewis system, when the forecasts reached the ground after the match.
M. T. A. Rauf, the secretary of the SLSCA told ‘The Island’ that the tournament committee decided to turn down the appeal. He said that the committee decided upon the decision of the two umpires and the match referee. He said that a considerable number of overs had been bowled in the match and De Mazenod College were the worthy winners.
When asked whether Joseph Vaz hadn’t been meted out an injustice because of the unavailability of the DL forecasts, the secretary said that team officials should have stopped playing until they received the forecasts.
The SLSCA secretary also rather surprisingly admitted that there had been a mistake with regard to the delay of the D/L forecast which he attributed to miscommunication on the part of the SLSCA.
The appeal by Joseph Vaz College has been termed a slap in the face of outstation schools by an outstation school official.
An official of the college said that the SLSCA has shown their double standards by turning down their appeal. "Would they have acted in the same manner if the school involved was a prominent Colombo school?," an official questioned.
"The SLSCA made the mistake. That’s disappointing for us. There are some officials in the Schools Cricket Association who act as if they are the watchdogs of the outstation schools. But in reality they are not. They don’t care a damn about outstation schools," the official said.
‘The Island’ also contacted the MiC of Joseph Vaz College. When asked why they continued playing despite not receiving the DL forecasts, he said the team did what the umpires and the match referee ordered them to do. "We had no other option but to play the match. We were asked to play by the match referee, Dilshan de Silva. He promised to give us the DL forecasts soon, every time we asked for them. The Under-15 tournament secretary was also aware of it. I informed him over the phone as soon as we found out that the DL forecasts were getting late. During the match we have to do what the match referee asks us to do. Had we stopped playing the match against the will of the match referee, the same tournament committee would have disqualified us for doing that," the MiC said.
