Sri Lanka introduced tough penalties for match-fixing and tightened sports betting restrictions on Monday in a bid to stamp out graft scandals that have dogged the country\u2019s cricket team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Allegations of corruption have plagued Sri Lankan cricket for years, including claims of match-fixing ahead of an international Test against England last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The provision appears in part to target the former president of Sri Lanka Cricket, Thilanga Sumathipala, who was until recently a member of the organisation\u2019s executive committee and whose family owns a gambling business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sumathipala, a controversial businessman and politician, has repeatedly denied involvement in the gambling side of the family business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMany tried to prevent this piece of legislation, but I am happy that it was taken up today,\u201d Sports Minister Harin Fernando said after the law was passed unanimously by parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Betting on sports matches hosted in Sri Lanka was already illegal, but the new rules will also ban Sri Lankans from gambling on overseas contests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new law comes months after Sports Minister Harin Fernando said the sport\u2019s local governance was riddled with graft \u201cfrom top to bottom\u201d, and that the International Cricket Council considered Sri Lanka one of the world\u2019s most corrupt cricketing nations. Former Sri Lankan fast bowler Dilhara Lokuhettige was last year suspended for corruption linked to a limited-over league in 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sri Lanka introduced tough penalties for match-fixing and tightened sports betting restrictions on Monday in a bid to stamp out graft scandals that have dogged the country\u2019s cricket team. Allegations of corruption have plagued Sri Lankan cricket for years, including claims of match-fixing ahead of an international Test against England last year. The provision appears […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74312,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74310\/revisions\/74312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}