Afridi to Captain Galle in Lanka Premier League

One of cricket’s best entertainers Shahid Afridi has signed to play the inaugural Lanka Premier League and will be captaining the Galle franchise. The franchise has been named Galle Gladiators. The 40-year-old former Pakistan captain is no stranger to Sri Lankan fans as he hammered then, the world’s fastest ODI hundred against them aged just 16 in 1996.

Attempts by Sri Lanka Cricket to launch a franchise based tournament of their own had failed to materialize on several occasions but this time around they seem to be making significant progress.

SLC had outsourced the competition to a Dubai based company and they in turn had found team owners. The board at one point was concerned about team owners with T-20 cricket mushrooming around the world and several owners either defaulting payments or being involved in corruption.

However, SLC has no reason to be concerned now as the owners of Galle team already have a team in the Pakistan Super League having successfully managed Quetta Gladiators.

Moin Khan, another former Pakistan captain will coach the Galle franchise.

LPL was scheduled to be played in August this year but was postponed to November due to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.

SLC is in the last stages of finalizing the event. Board officials were waiting for financial statements and a bank guarantee from the Dubai based company before signing a deal that would stretch to five years and will bring stability to their finances.

Officials were holding talks with Health Ministry on the safety measures that will be followed by players. The parties seem to have come to an agreement to conduct 72 hour PCR tests for participants rather than sending them on a two week quarantine period.

SLC were confident of attracting more overseas stars and possibly Indian players too. Former Indian all-rounder Irfan Pathan had expressed his desire to take part in the competition.

A franchise based T-20 tournament was conducted in Sri Lanka in 2012 called Sri Lanka Premier League but that ran into several problems and was soon stopped.