The latest update in the 2011 World Cup Final Fixing Probe! Sri Lanka’s former Sports Minister on Saturday said that he has offered enough crucial evidence to ICC that according to him shows that the 2011 World Cup was fixed.
Mahindananda Aluthgamage’s remarks come just a day after the local police dropped the investigation into the 2011 World Cup Final fixing claims due to the lack of evidence that Sri Lanka purposely lost finals to India.
Police had investigated Former Chief Selector Aravinda De Silva, opening batsman Upul Tharanga & the 2011 Captain Captain Kumar Sangakkara. Sangakkara was questioned nearly for 10 hours in SIU. But Aluthgamage who was Sports Minister at that time & now is State minister for energy said that there were “powerful people who are spending huge sums of money to hush up the investigation”.
He said that he has informed Alex Marshall, anti-corruption chief at the International Cricket Council (ICC), that he was ready to provide more evidence showing the match was fixed. Aluthgamage said that the police had failed to investigate the claims properly & appealed Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to intervene and pressure the ICC to reopen an investigation.
Marshall has said in a statement on Friday 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”. But he further added that the ICC takes, “allegations of this nature extremely seriously and should we receive any evidence to corroborate the claims, we will review our current position.”
However, the Sri Lankan Police have not responded to Aluthgamage’s claims. The questioning of the nation’s nest cricketers has triggered criticism in Sri Lanka against the government on social media ahead of the elections which is to be conducted on August 5.
