Sports

Basketball AGM on March 19
Is the Basketball Federation taking the right turning?
by Rex Clementine

The Annual General Meeting of the Sri Lanka Basketball Federation (SLBF) is scheduled to be held on March 19, 2005 at 10 am at the SLBF headquarters in Reid Avenue. The office bearers and the Executive Committee for the administrative year 2005/2006 will be elected on that day.

DIG Mahinda Balasuriya is expected to be re-elected uncontested this year along with other prominent office bearers. Balasuriya took over the leadership of the SLBF at a turbulent time with many officials at loggerheads, a division caused due to the differences of opinion held by SLBF’s former President and the Secretary, but under his stewardship, the SLBF has been able to work together.

SLBF also managed to finish off the national tournaments of the previous year while completing the Junior National Championships of the calendar year. The Senior Nationals were scheduled for early this year, but have been postponed after the tsunami disaster. Conducting tournaments on time has been the bugbear of the SLBF by Balasuriya’s predecessors.

Another plus point for Balasuriya has been his ability to bring in the much needed funds to the SLBF coffers. This has greatly helped the governing body in conducting tournaments on time. While for many years SLBF bank account remained nearly empty the bringing in of new sponsors has resulted in a surplus in the bank account.

However, it has been observed that SLBF doesn’t seem to have any long-term plans in place for both the junior and national cagers and there doesn’t seem to be any extra effort to popularise the game. Several associations attached to the federation still remain defunct and there hasn’t been any significant efforts to kick-start these associations. While some associations have been active orgainsing tournaments and other development programmes, certain associations have not been able to conduct even a single tournament.

During the year, Sri Lanka hardly had any representation in international championships. Only Sri Lanka’s men’s team made a tour of India and that, too, was a brief one in an insignificant tri-nation series in the south India.

It was also found out last year that some leading tournaments coincided with one another forcing leading players to participate in those they preferred, although they were of equal importance. The reason unearthed for this deficiency was the lack of communication between the various organisers and officials of SLBF.

While other leading sports bodies in the country were acting fast to help the tsunami victims, the SLBF was far too slow to react and it took them more than a month to decide that they should go around the country to visit the victims. The entire family of the captain of the national basketball team Chaminda de Alwis were killed by the disaster and the basketball chief is yet to visit his most vital and worst-affected player.

 

Powered By -


Produced by Upali Group of Companies