Kusal Janith with his Manager Ravi de Silva…

SLC president Thilanga Sumathipala said that now that the ICC had admitted there was a flaw in the tests carried out by the Qatar laboratory on the urine samples of Sri Lanka cricketer Kusal Perera there was a case for seeking financial redress from the sport’s international governing body.

“Without Perera’s personal expenses we have so far spent to about Rs. 13 million,” revealed Sumathipala. “Now that we have proved beyond reasonable doubt that Kusal is innocent and he is not guilty and that the ICC has agreed with our scientific case that we are right, as a player he has a claim.

“We will discuss with ICC separately with regard to certain payment of the costs which I am certain we want to refrain at the moment. I am confident we got the hard part right and we have a definite claim. We can’t sour the relationship with ICC but we are hopeful that something can be worked out. We have to definitely get our costs back. The indirect cost is colossal we will try to discuss that separately,” he said.

“We will have to take a different approach to this in consultation with the cricketer, lawyers and get advice and direction from the Sports Minister how we can handle this in the future.”

Sumathipala also recalled how SLC had fought out the case with the ICC on throwing and the banning of the doosra and brought about a change in the rules in defence of former Sri Lanka spinner Muthiah Muralitharan who went onto become the highest wicket-taker in Test history with 800 wickets.

“In the entire letter from the ICC it has been confirmed that the lawyers whom we have retained and the scientific evidence that was given on Perera has educated and taken the ICC into a different level of how they should work with this kind of situations in the future,” Sumathipala added