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The ongoing intellectual property dispute over the Decision Review System (DRS) has recently escalated into serious allegations of institutional fraud and deliberate misrepresentation against the International Cricket Council (ICC) legal team.

The controversy centers on Colombo-based Sri Lankan lawyer Senaka Weeraratna, who designed and published the core “Player Referral” framework in March 1997 via The Australian. This was nearly a decade before the ICC introduced its system. For over a decade, the ICC legal team—headlined by past and present counsel such as David Becker and Jonathan Hall—maintained a “no awareness” defense, claiming the governing body independently built the DRS and that Weeraratna waived his rights by publishing openly without a patent. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The shift from negligence to fraud

The cricket establishment has been severely shaken by recent evidence establishing actual physical notice. Records reveal that in July 2008, Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) officials physically handed a comprehensive dossier detailing Weeraratna’s 1997 blueprint to then-ICC General Manager of Cricket, David Richardson, in Colombo. The same dossier was delivered by Nishantha Ranatunga directly to the ICC headquarters in Dubai in June 2009. [1, 2, 3]

Legal advocates argue that maintaining a denial of knowledge while in physical possession of stamped prior art transitions the ICC’s defense from structural negligence into an active cover-up and material misrepresentation. This exposes past and present ICC legal advisors to credible threats of professional malpractice and fraud claims under global copyright frameworks like the Berne Convention, which protects an author’s moral right to attribution regardless of a patent.

Domestic backlash in Sri Lanka

The friction has intensified globally and locally due to a highly controversial corporate governance decision by Sri Lanka Cricket: [1]

• The Betrayal Accusation: Public backlash erupted in Sri Lanka after the Cricket Transformation Committee (CTC), tasked with domestic structural reforms, hired David Becker—the former ICC Legal Head who authored the original opinions denying Weeraratna credit—as an advisor to draft SLC’s new constitution. []
• Lack of State Lobbying: Sri Lankan cricket fans and legal advocates expressed deep disappointment that the reform committee completely failed to use its institutional platform to lobby the ICC for Weeraratna’s official recognition.
• The Call for Parity: Advocates point out that while statistical frameworks like the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method openly credit and compensate their inventors, the ICC continues to uniquely withhold authorial credit for the multi-million dollar DRS infrastructure.

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