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.