Sri Lanka Police's special investigation division on Friday (July 3) dropped a probe into allegations by former sports minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage that the 2011 World Cup final was fixed by “certain parties”. The Police said it found no evidence backing Aluthgamage's claims.
However, a day later Aluthgamage said he has offered more evidence to the International Cricket Council (ICC) that he feels shows the final between India and Sri Lanka was fixed.
Sri Lankan Police’s investigation saw then selector Aravinda de Silva, opener Upul Tharanga, Mahela Jayawardena, and then-captain Kumar Sangakkara being called for questioning.
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The Police probed all the angles into the final, which saw India beat Sri Lanka by 6 wickets with Gautam Gambhir making 97 and MS Dhoni making 91*. Sri Lanka had made four changes in the playing XI and Sangakkara had chosen to bat first after winning the toss at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on April 2, 2011.
"We are satisfied with their explanation. The inquiry is now closed. They had reasonable explanations about the changes that were made to the final squad. We found no evidence of any wrongdoing,” a top Police official had told AFP
But Aluthgamage isn’t pleased with the probe as he said there were "powerful people who are spending huge sums of money to hush up the investigation".
The ex-sports minister further added he has informed Alex Marshall, ICC's Anti-Corruption unit General Manager, that he was ready to provide more evidence showing the match was thrown.
Aluthgamage also called for Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s intervention into the matter, asserting Police had failed to probe the claims properly.
The ICC ACU head on Friday said there is no reason to doubt the integrity of 2011 World Cup final and it has not been provided any evidence that would merit an investigation.
But Marshall added that the apex body takes "allegations of this nature extremely seriously and should we receive any evidence to corroborate the claims, we will review our current position."
(With AFP inputs)
