Jaffna cricket stadium now scaled back for lack of funds

A controversial cricket stadium and "sports city" promised for Jaffna, launched with presidential fanfare less than a year ago, is being scaled back to a modest cricket ground after Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) admitted it lacks the funds to deliver it.

Speaking at a media briefing on Thursday, the SLC honorary secretary, Prakash Schaffter, said the project was under review and its scope being reassessed against available funding, conceding that the boards own review had found the approved plan beyond its means. "I do not think we have the funds at this point in time to invest in an international cricket stadium in Jaffna or any other area," he said.

The revised plan, he indicated, would focus on a cricket ground rather than the sweeping development originally unveiled. "The original project consisted of an international stadium, a sports city and a housing project, which we feel we cannot consider at this stage purely because of the magnitude and the reality of the available funding that we have at SLC," Schaffter said, adding that while most regulatory approvals had been obtained, the board would now build something far smaller. He insisted SLC remained committed to a ground in the city: "We are committed to having a cricket ground in Jaffna, but we are reviewing the extent to which we want to invest in the Jaffna project in the light of our current funding capacities."

The retreat comes barely nine months after the project was launched with considerable ceremony. The Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake laid the foundation stone on Mandaitivu Island, off Jaffna, in September 2025, for a 40,000-seat stadium across 48 acres that was to anchor a 138-acre sports city complete with star-class hotels, luxury apartments, a shopping complex and a swimming complex. 

The project was contentious long before its budget unravelled. The stadium was planned on ecologically fragile land, a lagoon and mangrove reserve at Mandaitivu, and the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society warned in a letter to Dissanayake that the construction was unlawful, having begun without the approvals required under the Coast Conservation and Coastal Resource Management Act. The Central Environmental Authority later halted the work after it emerged that no environmental impact assessment had been secured, ordering that one be completed before construction could resume. The president nonetheless pressed ahead, pledging during a visit to Mandaitivu to push the plan through despite warnings that clearing the mangroves would devastate biodiversity and weaken the coasts natural flood defences.

The stadium was to draw on Indian government funding, sought after a request reportedly made by the former cricketer and parliamentarian Sanath Jayasuriya directly to the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, and critics warned that Tamil land, environment and civilian space were once again being given over to a highly politicised development backed by Colombo and its international partners with little regard for the rights of local Tamils. The construction site carried its own grim history, with bullets unearthed during the works serving as a reminder of Mandaitivus violent past.

A cricket stadium for Jaffna had in any case been announced and shelved repeatedly for close to a decade. SLC earmarked funds and appointed architects for a Mandaitivu venue as far back as 2016 and 2017, for a ground that was once meant to be completed by 2022, only for successive plans to stall. Even before the latest downgrade, commentators had likened the scheme to the Hambantota stadium, a notorious white elephant in Mahinda Rajapaksas home district, and argued that the money would be better spent on school and grassroots facilities.