“We are going to make good system from the Sri Lanka Badminton administration and focus on a 2024 Olympic medal,” said Sri Lanka Badminton (SLB) president Nishantha Jayasinghe whose position is being contested by five others at the elections which was scheduled to be held today but postponed last evening on the directives of Sports Minister Harin Fernando.
Objections had been raised that elections were called less than three weeks before the closing date of accepting nominations, hence the decision to postpone the meeting by another week.
Rohan de Silva, Roshan Gunawardena, Palitha Hettiarachchi, H.W Kumara and Chamara Aluthge are to contest incumbent SLB chief for the top position.
Mohan Wijesinghe, Lasintha Ferdinando, Palitha Hettiarachchi, W.G. Punchihewa and Nishantha Jayasinghe submitted their nominations for the position of general secretary.
The candidates for the six vice-presidents posts are Roshan Fernando, Palitha Hettiarachchi, Parakrama Basnayaka, Chamara Aluthge, Roshan Gunawardena, N.L Gunasekara, Nishantha Jayasinghe, Deepal Madurapperuma, R.M.T Jayasiri, C.S. Lokubarana, Asanka Ratnayaka, Princely Cooke, Buddika de Silva, Harsha Hiripiriya and H.W. Kumara.
R.M.T. Jayasiri, W.G Punchihewa, Kanchana Wimalasuriya, H.W. Kumara, Aliyas Faizer, Nirmala Hariharan, Janaitha Perera and Buddika de Silva will contest for the Assistant Secretary post. Three officials Mangala Gamage, Kapila Jayasinghe and Gayan de Abrew will contest for the post of Treasurer.
“Our aim is to guide players to make Badminton a professional sport. This is very important to develop the sport. Our plan is to make a strong administration team and work with all stakeholders,” said the SLB chief at a press conference earlier this week. “We are coming with proper plan wanted to ensure integrity, equality, transparency, unity, professionalism, create opportunities, build careers and sustainable income sources to promote this sport.”
Jayasinghe said: “Actually our neighbour India has a good system and they already produced Olympic medallists. If we have a proper administration, we also can produce good results. Sri Lanka Badminton got the services of a coach from Indonesia and it has been very successful. For the first time in the history of badminton, we achieved fourth place in men’s doubles and were quarter-finalists in women’s doubles at the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia. All world leading shuttlers are in the Asian region.
“However, our men’s doubles pair qualified to play in the quarter-finals at the last Asian Games in Jakarta. This was another great achievement. In addition, recently one player won gold at mixed relay event at the Youth Olympics. Sri Lanka juniors were placed 16th advancing from 37th place.
“We won two silver and three bronze medals at the Asian under 21 championships. At the Nepal Open tournament, the women’s double pair won silver and a bronze in men’s singles. Last month we were the Sudirman Cup group champions at the world tournament. All these achievements we achieved during the past. We wanted to send players for international tournament to get more exposure and our vision is to set up good environment giving all facilities to the players.”
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