Sri Lanka vs Zimbabwe 2017: Groundsmen forced to strip off their pants after the fifth ODI

What's the story?

After Sri Lanka were humiliated at the hands of Zimbabwe in the fifth ODI of the series, the groundsmen who were at work at the Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium (MRICS) in Hambantota, were forced to strip off their pants, which were branded Sri Lankan Cricket trousers provided by the board, and were told that they would not be paid until they returned the uniforms.

"They only paid us for our three days worth of work after taking our clothes. They hadn't told us to come prepared with another set of clothes. They asked us to hand over the trousers, so we had no choice but to do that," a couple of groundsmen told Hiru News.

In case you didn't know...

The fourth and fifth matches of the five-match ODI series between Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe took place in Hambantota and both the matches saw the visitors getting the better of the hosts to seal a historic series win.

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The Sri Lankan board usually hires a handful of local workers on a daily wage basis whenever a match is to be played at a nearby venue so that they can cover the entire ground quickly in case it rains during the match. They were given SLC uniforms to wear whilst performing their duties at the venue.

The details

As mentioned earlier, the groundsmen were forced to give the trousers back in order to get paid and were left with only their underwear. When this issue came to light, the Lankan board was quick to apologise to the groundsmen and promised to take action against the ones responsible for this mess.

They also confirmed that they would take the necessary steps to ensure that the groundsmen were compensated for what panned out after the fifth ODI.

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Author's take

It was a complete disgrace on the part of the officials at the MPICS to force the groundsmen to remove their pants. The groundsmen should have been informed of this in advance so that they could have taken a spare set of clothes with them.

At the same time, credit should be given to the Sri Lankan board for handling the situation without any transparency and the ones who are behind this mess should be severely punished by the SLC.