Sports Desk: Already reeling under the IPL spot-fixing scandal, world cricket has been served another shocker, this time by Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka Cricket has banned two umpires Sagara Gallage and Maurice
Zilva, whose name figured in a sting operation last year dealing with
illegal payments for influencing first-class matches, whereas Gamini
Dissanayake, a third umpire, has been demoted from the top umpire's
panel for a year and issued a "severe warning" by the board CEO.
The decisions came after an emergency executive committee meeting
in Colombo, where the recommendations of the disciplinary committee's
recommendations were endorsed.
The sting, broadcast by an Indian television channel, claimed to
have "exposed" several first-class umpires from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka
and Pakistan who were allegedly willing to give decisions favouring
players for a fee.
In the sting, conducted in July and August 2012, the reporters
claimed to belong to a sports management company and promised the
umpires officiating assignments in events of all kinds around the world,
largely domestic Twenty20 leagues.
The hardest hit of the three Sri Lankan umpires was Gallage, who
was banned for 10 years from all forms of cricket, while Zilva was
handed a three-year ban. Dissanayake, the third Sri Lankan umpire named
in the sting, was the most high-profile of the three, having regularly
been the fourth umpire in international matches, though he was yet to be
one of the main officials in an international game.
The Pakistan and Bangladesh boards have already handed out punishments to their umpires caught in the sting.
Bangladesh's Nadir Shah was banned for 10 years by the BCB on
corruption charges, and Pakistan's Nadeem Ghauri and Anis Siddiqi have
already been slapped with bans.
Zilva and Gallage were the reserve umpires in two warm-up matches each before the World T20 in Sri Lanka last year.
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