COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s cricket board and two senior players were locked in a war of words yesterday, a day after the World Cup-winning Twenty20 team returned home as national heroes.
Former skippers Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara sparked the row by criticising cricket officials during a red-carpet reception at the airport, but the board hit back with a strongly-worded statement.
Sri Lanka Cricket denied allegations that they had made any disparaging remarks against the duo after they appeared to announce their retirement as the World Cup tournament got underway in Dhaka in mid-March.
Jayawardene was upset with reported comments from a Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) official, who was said to have accused them of announcing their retirement without prior notice to the board.
“SLC considers such statements as damaging to both the image of the institution and the officials concerned,” the board said in a one-page statement.
It said Jayawardene’s allegations were taken seriously because he suggested that the purported remarks by board secretary Nishantha Ranatunga and CEO Ashley de Silva could have demoralised the players.
“SLC regrets such unsubstantiated accusations levelled against the secretary and CEO by a senior member of the national team without verifying the facts,” the statement said.
Amid the allegations and denials, both players maintained on Tuesday that they had never publicly announced their intention to quit T20 cricket despite giving interviews talking about retirement.
Cricket commentators as well as local and international media played up the final game as a farewell match for the two former Sri Lankan skippers.
On Tuesday tens of thousands of fans joined an all-night party in Colombo after the team was driven in a slow motorcade from the airport, 35 kilometres (21 miles) from downtown Colombo.
The victory on Sunday night against India in Dhaka came 18 years after Sri Lanka’s triumph in the 50-over World Cup.
Meanwhile, axed England batsman Kevin Pietersen denied he had a bad relationship with his team-mates, adding he was the first to help Jonathan Trott during his stress-related illness, a report said yesterday.
The England and Wales Cricket Board axed the South Africa-born Pietersen in February following the team’s 5-0 Ashes thrashing in Australia, despite him being England’s leading run-scorer across all formats.
Officials have not revealed the reason for dumping Pietersen, but it has been suggested that the cricketer’s deteriorating relationship with his team-mates was behind the decision.
“Contrary to popular belief, I have a very good relationship with most of the guys in the English dressing room,” Pietersen, 33, said in an interview published on the Times of India website yesterday.
“I like to look after them. If someone is struggling, I like to go up and put an arm around him.”
Pietersen said he was the first to notice that Trott was struggling to handle the pressure which forced him to return home from Australia after the first Ashes Test in Brisbane.
“He (Trott) has said that I was the first person to notice his problem,” Pietersen said. “I told him that he needed to calm down and he was putting too much pressure on himself.
“He is doing quite well now,” he added.
England, who won the World Twenty20 in the Caribbean in 2010 with Pietersen being named the player of the tournament, failed to make the semi-finals of the recent edition in Bangladesh.
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