June 16, 2008	Monday	Jamadi-us-Sani 11, 1429

COLOMBO, June 15: The Pallakelle cricket stadium, owned by Sri Lanka Cricket, is nearing completion but it will require a sum close to Rs200 million ($1.8 million) for the site to be in line to hold games during the 2011 World Cup – a remote possibility at the moment.

Once the first stage of the project is completed, the stadium will be ready to stage domestic matches, mainly inter-provincial games. Bandula Warnapura, the outgoing SLC’s director of operations, had undertaken the task to accelerate the completion of the stadium and was confident of completing the job in three months.

“The bad weather we had in the last six months delayed the completion of Stage 1 by about two months,” Warnapura said. “Otherwise we would have finished it by now and played some of the inter-provincial tournament matches there. We are developing that as stage one.

“The bad weather delayed sending out clay for the centre wicket which is not ready yet. The outfield we have planted about 75 per cent of the grass. The underground drainage and sprinkler system is coming up which will take another one month. When I saw it for the first time I thought I must volunteer and develop it to play local matches. I am proud to say that it is almost ready now.

“Stage 2 will be to bring the stadium to international standard for which we need another Rs200 million with lights coming in. We will develop that because this is a stadium SLC had taken over spending Rs250 million and which has been neglected for nearly two years.”

In October 2003, SLC entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Dubai-funded Zarara Sports (Pvt) Ltd for the construction of a Rs600 million ($5.5 million) Pallakelle Sports Complex, which was to be known as the Kandy International Cricket Stadium.

The project was expected to be completed by August 2004. A loan of $1 million was obtained from a foreign bank for this purpose with SLC as the guarantor. But due to financial constraints, and the inability of Zarara Sports (Pvt) Ltd to repay the loan to the bank which threatened to sue them.

As guarantor SLC had to undertake payment of the balance money, so they took over the entire project from in 2006. However work on the stadium came to a standstill until it was revived again by Warnapura. —Agencies