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Australia cricket board, Cricket Australia (CA) on Thursday stated that team's tour of Sri Lanka is still on track despite a heightened tension due to countrywide civil unrest in the Island Nation.
Australia's government has advised nationals to reconsider their need to travel to Sri Lanka after unrest. The Kangaroos are scheduled to play three T20Is, five One-day Internationals and two Tests in Sri Lanka beginning June 7, but the unrest in the county — which forced the country’s prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to resign and left nearly half-a-dozen people dead and hundreds injured — has forced CA to monitor the evolving situation in the country more closely. An Australia A tour of Sri Lanka is planned at the same time.
As per the itinerary, the Australian cricketers will spend 16 days of their month-long tour in Colombo, where the violence has unfolded.
A Cricket Australia spokesman said the sporting body, the federal government and Sri Lankan cricket officials were “keeping a close eye” on developments in the country.
Cricket Australia said the players and support staff had been briefed and, with three weeks until the squad's departure date, "there are no changes to the schedule.” On Wednesday, Sri Lanka's president promised to appoint a new prime minister, empower the Parliament and abolish the all-powerful executive presidential system as reforms aimed at stabilizing a country engulfed in a political and ecomonic crisis.
In a televised address, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said he condemned attacks on peaceful protesters by mobs who came to support his brother and former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, who resigned Monday.
Earlier, a report in cricket.com.au said that, “CA officials had until this point been certain the tour would go ahead, and remain confident." In fact, Cricket Australia’s head of security, Stuart Bailey, had done a ‘reconnaissance tour’ of Sri Lanka last month in the midst of the economic crisis, and the team was cleared to tour the country.
