Lankan Premier League Likely to Get Postponed

Updated - 10 Jan 2019, 02:12 AM

Lankan Premier League
LPL was a brainchild of former SLC chief Sumathihpala. Getty Images

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Sri Lankan Cricket (SLC) has decided to postpone their plan of hosting a franchise-based T20 tournament namely, Lankan Premier League (LPL). However, the board haven’t confirmed the postponement news yet.

Meanwhile, the talk of the event not happening has been doing the rounds since the elections of SLC. Tournament Director of LPL, Russel Arnold confirmed the postponement with a tweet.
LPL was a brainchild of former SLC chief, Thilanga Sumathihpala and the event. Moreover, it gained momentum after Sumathipala had received the backing of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. 
BCCI that conducts the cash-rich Indian Premier League doesn’t allow Indian players to take part in other franchise-based events. While explaining the technical difficulties of releasing players, BCCI had verbally committed to free certain players and the names of Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh and Yusuf Pathan were going round in cricket circles. 
The participation of Indian players would have made the event commercially profitable.
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For the first couple of years, SLC was going to own the franchises and only sell the branding rights. That would have forced SLC to pump in money for the event, and the board was content in doing so with the hope that the event would be profitable in the years to come. 
SLC also had allocated a slot for a ten-year period for the event.

We would have loved to make profits, no doubt about that. But it was not going to happen in the first few years for practical reasons. But once we had built up a product, we could market it. More than profit making, through Lankan Premier League, what we intended was creating a competitive environment and raise the standards of domestic cricket,” Cricbuzz told SLC.

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