Sri Lanka Cricket To Finally Offer Contracts To Their Players for the 2021 Season

The Sri Lanka Cricket board has finally decided to offer contracts to its national team players after long-drawn disputes over the same. The state of cricket in the country was in turmoil, with plenty of senior players backing out due to arguments with the board.

There will be new players added to the list who performed excellently in the recently concluded white-ball series against India. These include opener Avishka Fernando, and bowlers Chamika Karunaratne and Asitha Fernando.

“We are planning to give the contracts to the players. There will be three or four new players in the new list, who have performed well in the recent past and had not been granted contracts earlier,” a senior SLC ex-co official was quoted as saying to Sunday Morning Sports.

The Techincal Advisory Committee (TAC) of SLC, with Aravindra de Silva leading, had earlier announced contracts for the year. However, the players refused to sign them, since there was no transparency in player categorization. They were allegedly told by the senior players to turn down the contracts.

The Sri Lankan trio banned earlier in the year won’t be presented with the contract

On their tour of England, three players, Danushka Gunathilaka, Kusal Mendis, and Niroshan Dickwella, were caught violating the covid-19 bio-bubble protocols. As a result, they were banned from representing the country. With no contract being offered to them, their careers might be heading to a standstill.

The previous contract scheme saw players being offered contracts in four categories. While the category of ‘A’ saw players pocked $100,000 a month, the last category, ‘D’, earned them $35,000.

Speaking about the new contracts which will likely restore some parity in Sri Lankan cricket, a senior official was happy about the most recent development.

“Finally SLC agreeing to settle this will be great thing. The contract dispute had divided former legendary players into at least four factions, the current lot of players too in into about four factions, and the current board into two factions.”

“Some of the players who are already named for contracts will go. The new contracts will be from August till the end of December when the new player assessments will be redone. All the issues that were here and there will be rectified from January onwards,” the SLC ex-official said.

This comes as good news for Sri Lankan cricketers ahead of their series against South Africa which is scheduled to start early next month.

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