Jaffna International Cricket Stadium: Another white elephant?

For a decade, fortunes of the national cricket team have been in doldrums. Yet, the Shammi Silva-led administration – which has been controlling the governing body of the most popular sport of the island since 2019 – instead of undertaking a systematic and comprehensive initiative to improve the performance of players, is spending money on activities that spell further doom for the game which is followed with tremendous passion throughout the country.

Last week, President Anura Kumara Disanayake laid the foundation stone of Jaffna International Cricket Stadium with much fanfare. On the surface, building an international cricket stadium in an area which was ravaged by the war conveys an appealing and romantic narrative. But often such fanciful moves are undermined due to lack of financial and operational viability. 

According to media reports, the project is said to be solely funded by Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC). When the Indian Premier Narendra Modi visited Sri Lanka last April, coach of the national cricket team Sanath Jayasuriya requested financial assistance from the Government of India to construct the stadium in Jaffna. Nevertheless, it seems that Jayasuriya’s request had not been taken seriously by Modi.

In 2020, when the plans were announced to construct an international cricket stadium in Homagama, many former Sri Lankan cricketers, including Jayasuriya and Mahela Jayawardene, publicly criticised the idea of building a 40,000-seat capacity international cricket stadium costing $ 30-40 million. It is ironic why the same players are maintaining questionable silence when a similar move is being contemplated by the same administrative body with the blessings of a different political administration. 

Unlike cricket authorities in England and India, the cricket board in Sri Lanka is not a cash-rich entity. Establishing and maintaining an international cricket stadium will significantly stress the financial resources of the governing body, leaving very little amount of funds for the development of the sport. In 2011, the SLC went into a severe financial crisis subsequent to building international cricket stadiums in Sooriyawewa and Pallekale. The gravity of the aforesaid financial crisis was so acute that the Board was even unable to pay the salaries of cricketers for a number of months. 

Constructing an international cricket stadium in a highly remote area like Sooriyawewa, which is known for jungles and wild elephants, defied rationale and reason except the area was part of the political heartland of the Rajapaksa dynasty. Although the stadium was launched in 2011 by spending billions of money, very few international matches have been played at the venue, and not a single international test match has been played at the ground.

Like Hambantota, Jaffna is not an area renowned for producing cricketers and Tamils in the northern peninsula are generally renowned for their vigorous academic pursuits not for excellence in sports. If politicians and the general public want to see youngsters in Jaffna representing the national team one day, resources could be deployed to develop cricket-related facilities in schools in Jaffna apart from setting up facilities to improve the skills of the cricketers in the region. 

It is quite unfortunate that the SLC is embarking on costly and questionable initiatives despite national cricketers not having access to some basic facilities. Sri Lanka is perhaps the only mainstream cricket-playing country where national-level cricketers do not even have access to a swimming pool (at R. Premadasa stadium – where the training sessions are held) to recover after practices. 

Interestingly, two years ago, as an Opposition MP, the President at the Parliament termed the Shammi Silva-led administration as corrupt and incompetent and even appealed to the then Government to dissolve the SLC and appoint an interim cricket board instead. However, it seems that past criticism has been completely forgotten and the Government is working hand in hand with the group of individuals whom they labelled as corrupt to the core.