Sri Lanka Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage Offers ICC Evidence To Prove 2011 World Cup Was Fixed

Former Sri Lanka Sports Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage, on Saturday, said  he has offered more evidence to ICC to prove that the 2011 World Cup was fixed. His latest comments have come just a day after local police dropped an investigation into the claims, citing a lack of evidence that Sri Lanka deliberately lost the final to hosts India.

The inquiry stared after Aluthgamage alleged that the final was fixed. While he could not reveal any evidence to back his claim, he said he takes full responsibility of his comments. Aluthgamage said he did not want to go into the details for the sake of the nation before stating the certain groups were involved in fixing the game.

“Today I am telling you that we sold the 2011 World Cup,” Aluthgamage, who was the sports minister at the time, said last month. “In 2011, we were to win, but we sold the match. I feel I can talk about it now. I am not connecting players, but some sections were involved.

The Sri Lankan Sports Ministry did not take long to launch an inquiry but could not find any evidence of fixing. Police had grilled former chief selector Aravinda de Silva, opening batsman Upul Tharangaand the 2011 captain Kumar Sangakkara,  the latter for nearly 10 hours.

However, Mahindananda Aluthgamage, who was sports minister at the time and is now state minister for energy, said “there were powerful people who are spending huge sums of money to hush up the investigation”, according to The Times of India.

He said that he has informed Alex Marshall, anti-corruption chief at the ICC, that he was ready to provide more evidence showing the match was thrown. He also said police had failed to probe the claims properly and urged Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to intervene and pressure the ICC to reopen an investigation.

On Friday,  Marshall had said in a statement that “at this time” the ICC has “not been presented with any evidence that supports the claims made or which would merit launching an investigation”. He, however, made it clear that the ICC would take the required action if they receive any evidence to corroborate the claims.

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