Years of governance failures and financial irregularities have brought Sri Lanka Cricket to a moment of forced reckoning. The ICC has penalised SLC for political interference twice in the past decade — stripping the board of its voting rights and placing its funds in escrow in 2015, then suspending it outright in 2023, a decision that also cost Sri Lanka the right to host the 2024 Men’s Under-19 World Cup. It is against that backdrop that Sports Minister Sunil Kumara Gamage has constituted a nine-member Transformation Committee, charged with dismantling what has not worked and building something that can.
A committee assembled to answer a specific institutional failure
The Transformation Committee is not a caretaker arrangement — it has been given a defined reform mandate and a composition built to execute it. Former Member of Parliament, investment banker, and Samagi Jana Balawegaya member Eran Wickramaratne has been appointed chairman, a selection that signals the government’s awareness of how closely the ICC will scrutinise this transition. Wickramaratne is understood to have stepped down from his internal party positions before accepting the role and does not currently hold a parliamentary seat. Reaching outside the government’s own political ranks to appoint an opposition figure as chairman represents a deliberate attempt to establish the committee’s independence from direct state control.
In a statement, Wickramaratne said, “I am privileged to lead a nine-member committee of individuals with impeccable integrity and expertise.” The eight alongside him have been drawn from cricket, law, corporate leadership, and public administration — former Sri Lanka Captain Kumar Sangakkara, Roshan Mahanama, and Sidath Wettimuny provide playing pedigree and institutional knowledge, corporate professionals Prakash Schaffter, Avanthi Colombage, and Thushira Radella bring organisational management depth, and lawyers Dinal Phillips and Upul Kumarapperuma complete the group. Colombage is the only woman among the nine. Wettimuny’s appointment adds a layer of direct precedent — he chaired the interim committee that governed SLC during the last comparable government intervention in 2015, giving the current body an anchor of institutional memory at a moment when continuity of purpose matters.
The collapse that cleared the way
As previously reported by cricexec, the resignation of Shammi Silva and the entire SLC executive committee created the vacancy this committee now fills. Sri Lanka Cricket confirmed the full extent of the departure in an official statement:
“The President of Sri Lanka Cricket, Mr. Shammi Silva, has tendered his resignation from the post, effective today. Along with him, the office bearers and members of the Executive Committee of the SLC have also submitted their resignations. This decision has been formally communicated to His Excellency President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the Honorable Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, Mr. Sunil Kumara Gamage.”
Silva, 65, had held the presidency since 2019, winning the position uncontested in 2021, 2023, and 2025, and served as Asian Cricket Council President in 2025 after succeeding Jay Shah. He had previously been removed from office in 2023 following a poor Men’s ODI World Cup campaign before returning to the role in 2025. Sri Lanka’s failure to reach the Super Eights at the T20 World Cup co-hosted with India earlier this year proved to be the final pressure point, ending a seven-year tenure defined more by institutional entrenchment than administrative progress.
Rewriting the constitution as the committee’s first and most critical task
Wickramaratne has identified governance reconstruction as the committee’s opening priority. He said, “Our immediate priority is a total overhaul of the governance framework at SLC,” before outlining the mechanism through which that overhaul will be delivered, adding, “The cornerstone of this effort will be the implementation of the new constitution, ensuring it serves as a robust, modern foundation for the sport.”
The existing SLC constitution has attracted sustained criticism for concentrating power within non-performing and at times non-existent cricketing bodies, creating conditions in which financial mismanagement and administrative dysfunction could persist unchallenged across successive administrations. The inclusion of two lawyers — Phillips and Kumarapperuma — within the nine signals that constitutional drafting is an active deliverable with a defined timeline, not a long-term aspiration. Wickramaratne also confirmed the committee was “committed to absolute compliance with International Cricket Council regulations while embedding transparency, anti-corruption, and professionalism into the organisation’s DNA” — a direct acknowledgement that everything the committee does will be measured against the ICC’s standard for what constitutes legitimate governance reform rather than political interference.
Sangakkara and the performance brief that completes the mandate
The committee’s second declared priority is restoring Sri Lanka’s competitive standing in world cricket, and Wickramaratne has set the ambition at the highest level. He said, “We will focus on establishing the structures, world-class facilities, and incentive models necessary to empower our national teams. Our goal is to enable our players to consistently deliver world-class performances and elevate Sri Lanka back to the top tier of international rankings.”
Sangakkara’s presence on the committee gives that goal a foundation of credibility that few individuals in Sri Lankan cricket could match. Across 134 Tests, 404 ODIs, and 46 T20Is, he became the country’s highest run-getter in both Test and ODI cricket and led the side to the final of the 2011 ICC Men’s ODI World Cup. Since retiring from international cricket, he has moved into high-performance coaching and currently serves as Head Coach of Rajasthan Royals in IPL 2026, having replaced Rahul Dravid in the position. The governance and performance briefs are, in the committee’s framing, inseparable — and with the ICC watching every step of this transition, the speed and substance of what the Transformation Committee delivers in its earliest weeks will set the terms for everything that follows.
