Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) yesterday evening announced the appointment of the following members to the National Selection Committee “with immediate effect”.

The six-member panel was ratified by the Minister of Youth and Sports Namal Rajapaksa.

Pramodya Wickramasinghe (Chairman), Romesh Kaluwitharana, Hemantha Wickramaratne, Varuna Waragoda, Uvais Karnain, and Thilaka Nilmini Gunarathne.

Bbefore yesterday’s appointment, Sri Lanka become probably the only country in the world which was involved in international cricket for almost two and half months without the national cricket selection committee.

The previous selection panel was disbanded after Sri Lanka’s second and final Test against England in Galle on 25 January. Its Head Ashantha de Mel resigned following the 2-0 whitewash in that series which followed the 2-0 loss, another whitewash, in South Africa.

After the England Tests, Sri Lanka played an all-format series in the West Indies. Pramodya Wickramasinghe and Chaminda Mendis reportedly did the selections during the series with the former being the on-tour selector.

Pathum Nissanaka and Ashen Bandara were given international debut during the series and there was notable performance from Nissanka, especially in the Tests, which cemented his place in the final XI. The infusion of young blood in the national team earned praise from many quarters for the interim selectors.

Yet in two weeks, on 21 April, Sri Lanka will start another two-match Test series against Bangladesh in Kandy. After Bangladesh, they will be involved in a busy schedule of series, in fact one after another, in a year packed with both originally scheduled matches as well as assignments that were postponed from last year due to the pandemic. There is a T20 World Cup coming up in October as well.

The SLC nominations of the selectors had to be finalised by the National Sports Council (NSC). And then the names that are picked by the NSC had to get final ratification by the National (Overall) Sports Selection Committee. The Sports Minister will only give green light to the names thereafter.

Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara are the cricket-related officials of the NSC, appointed by Sport Mister Rajapaksa last August. The NSC is headed by Gen. Shavendra Silva.

The National Sports Selection Committee consists of Gen. Silva as its Head, and National Olympic Committee (NOC) President Suresh Subramaniam, Maxwell de Silva who is the NOC General Secretary, Sri Lanka tennis stalwart Arjun Fernando, and Mohamed Hafeez Marso.

It was only last December that SLC announced the national cricket selectors, that time too after a long wait.

On 4 December last year, a seven-member new panel was appointed consisting Ashantha de Mel (Chairman), Chaminda Mendis, Pramodya Wickramasinghe, Ranjith Madurasinghe, (Ms.) Nilmini Gunarathne, Hemantha Devapriya, and Uvais Karnain.

De Mel headed the previous committee (before December) as well whilst Mendis too was one of its members. The third member of the previous panel, Vinothen John, was omitted. The same panel announced in December was to make selections for Sri Lanka women’s as well as the Under-19 cricket.