Turf war delays Surrey Tsunami project

Surrey's chief executive, Paul Sheldon, has written to the President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapakse, to express his "deep frustration" that a state-of-the-art cricket facility the club helped to build in Sri Lanka as part of their tsunami-relief efforts in 2007 has remained unused for almost two years due to a failure to lay any turf on the outfield.

The Surrey Cricket Village in Magonna was funded using half of the £1 million proceeds from the Tsunami Appeal match that took place at The Oval in June 2005, and was officially opened in December 2007 during England's Test tour of Sri Lanka, almost exactly three years after the region had been devastated by a massive tidal wave that claimed the lives of more than 35,000 people, and left a further half-a-million homeless.

Surrey's relief project consisted of 45 purpose-built homes for local inhabitants who lost their livelihood and at least three members of their immediate families, as well as a full-size cricket pitch carved out of what had previously been scrubland, with a pavilion, a professionally prepared square and a fully-stocked groundsman's shed.

While the houses were delivered on time and on budget, Sri Lanka Cricket was left to oversee the final completion of the ground, the cost of which was estimated to be 2.8 million rupees (approx £15,000). And yet, despite repeated assurances, no further progress has been made, with the upkeep of the existing facilities already exceeding that figure.

"It is hugely disappointing, when all that is required is the very simple issue of laying the grass around the outfield," Sheldon told Cricinfo. "It's not a funding issue as far as we are concerned, because we've provided funding for the whole project. The square has been laid, there's a pavilion there for changing, as well as all the groundsman's equipment, such as mowers. I have tried to keep myself updated, but I had my last assurance that it would be all be done by the end of September, and that was back in June."

The reason for the delay is understood to be a political battle between SLC and the local community, but Rajapakse's intervention could finally force the project to reach completion. He visited the region last week to attend the opening of a football stadium, and was reportedly shocked at the lethargy of the progress.

According to reports in the Sri Lankan press, the President has instructed the Sports Minister, Gamini Lokuge - who attended the 2007 opening alongside Sheldon and the MCC's Roger Knight - to get to the bottom of the matter, and SLC has been ordered to pass the responsibility for the venue over to another minister, Rohitha Abeygunawardene.

"It's very frustrating that we've raised all these funds to produce a wonderful village and this ground, and yet it has taken the president's intervention to galvanise everything into action," said Sheldon. "There has been talk about the ground being a potential international cricket venue, but that was never what we intended. We wanted it to be for the local people and surrounding villages that didn't have any cricket facilities."

A similar project, undertaken in conjunction with MCC in nearby Seenigama, was opened at the same time as the Surrey Cricket Village, and proved an instant hit, with England's players holding a coaching clinic for local schoolchildren ahead of a hugely successful charity match that arguably attracted more spectators than some of the Test matches. With the Surrey Village boasting street names such as "Alec Stewart Mawatha", Sheldon believes that a real opportunity to boost the game's profile has been lost.

"It's so frustrating to be so far away and not being able to influence it as one would like," said Sheldon. "But we're pleased now that the president has become involved, and I've written to him as well, to try and encourage some progress, because it really isn't going to take very much to make things happen."

Nishantha Ranatunga, the SLC secretary, said that he was aware of the situation, but added that he was not in a position to comment further. "It's not true that nothing is happening, a lot of things are happening there," he told Cricinfo.