Match fixing:

Minister denies media report

Environment Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa denied a report on match fixing allegations in an English daily yesterday.

The Minister who briefed the media at Wednesday's post-Cabinet press conference has been quoted as saying that the relevant authority should probe match fixing allegations against Mahela Jayawardena and Thilan Samaraweera.

Government Information Director General said that the news item which has been attributed to Minister Yapa is far from the truth and highly distorted and misleading.

The headline and the opening paragraph itself is misleading as Minister Yapa has not uttered a single word regarding match fixing allegations against Mahela and Thilan or that the relevant authority should probe this allegation, as reported in the news item.

In fact what the Minister did say answering a query at the post-Cabinet press briefing on March 9 at the Government Information Department was: "Media has the freedom to write and express what they want. The Government does not deprive the media of this right. There are institutions (referring to the ITN story) or owners of such institutions who can take action against their people. Let the ITN handle it on its own." The Minister said that Sri Lanka cricketers are not betrayers.

"Not even a single allegation has been made against our cricketers, past or present from the outset. But on the contrary there are instances where the cricketers of other countries were subject to such allegations resulting in imposing ban on playing cricket," he said.