Minister of Sports Roshan Ranasinghe has emphasized the importance of investigating if the funds received by Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) are utilized to produce talented players.

The Minister has further stated that the current national cricket team has the capacity and the talent to defeat any team in the world.

Noting that the SL cricket team was capable of easily defeating the Indian team during the time of former captain Arjuna Ranatunga, the minister further noted that this capacity can be restored in the current team as well.

Sri Lankan cricketer Danushka Gunathilaka has been found not guilty of sexual intercourse without consent following an accusation of “stealthing” involving a Tinder date in Sydney, ABC news reported today.

The 32-year-old was arrested in November while in Australia for the T-20 World Cup, after he went for drinks with a woman near the Opera House.

He had chatted online for several days and then had dinner with the woman, who can’t be identified for legal reasons, before being invited back to her eastern suburbs home, the NSW District Court heard.

The Crown’s case was that he removed a condom during intercourse without the woman’s knowledge when she had consented only to protected sex.

The complainant told the court she did not see the batsman remove the condom, but saw it on the floor shortly after the intercourse stopped.

Judge Sarah Huggett today found evidence about the “genesis” of the woman’s complaint undermined the reliability of her evidence.

The judge said the woman had given different accounts in her two statements; the second, given in April this year, went into further detail about the issue of stealthing.

But the judge said the complainant did not have a “clear memory” of what happened around the time she saw the condom on the floor.

“The evidence establishes there was no opportunity for the accused to remove the condom during the intercourse because that intercourse was continuous,” she said.

Judge Huggett considered the woman’s first conversations with two close friends, which seemed to frame the complaint in terms of the roughness of the sexual activity.

Mr Gunathilaka’s defence counsel argued the woman lied, gave self-serving evidence and appeared to not remember parts of the night that were inconsistent with a “narrative” she created, which morphed over time.

Murugan Thangaraj SC told the judge the Crown failed to establish the woman’s reliability and highlighted what he said were inconsistencies and implausibility in her version of events.

He said it was “completely illogical” to claim she felt ambushed before lighting candles in her bedroom, effectively setting it up for “a romantic sexual liaison”.

The Sri Lanka women’s cricket team led by Chamari Athapattu, who won the silver medal in the women’s cricket event at the Asian Games, is scheduled to return to Sri Lanka tonight (28).

Sri Lanka won an Asian Games medal after 9 years.

This is the third medal won in the cricket event at this sports festival.

Earlier in 2014, the Sri Lanka men’s cricket team won the gold medal and the women’s team won the bronze medal.

Meanwhile, commencing the men’s cricket matches yesterday, the Nepali team managed to set a cricket record in the match held against Mongolia.

Nepali batters shattered three world records in the Asian Games 2023 match against Mongolia en route to becoming the first team to amass a 300-plus total in T20Is on Wednesday.

Kushal Malla, a 19-year-old left-handed batter, broke David Miller and Rohit Sharma’s joint record to register the fastest-ever T20I hundred in 34 balls.

By the end of the innings, Malla had scored 137 not out off 50 balls with 8 fours and 12 sixes.

The previous record for the highest innings total in a T20I was held by Afghanistan, who had amassed 278 for 3 against Ireland on February 23, 2019.

Dipendra Singh Airee blasted a nine-ball fifty that bettered Yuvraj Singh’s 16-year-old record by scoring 50 runs in 9 balls.

Captain Rohit Paudel scored 61 runs off 27 balls, and he and Malla built a partnership of 193 runs for the third wicket in 63 balls.

It went down in the records as the best partnership for the third wicket in a Twenty20 match.

The Nepali team hit 26 sixes in this innings and also held the record for most sixes in a T20I innings. With that, Afghanistan’s record of 22 sixes in an innings was broken.

The Mongolian team, who played the reply innings, were bowled out for 41 runs in 13.1 overs. Only one Mongolian batter reached a double-digit score, 10 in 23 by Davaasuren Jamyansuren.