Since its launch in 2008, the popularity of Indian Premier League has gone through the roof.  Some boards like the English and Wales  Cricket Board, Cricket Australia and  even the  International Cricket Council did not take kindly to the idea that the IPL should have its own window where all international cricket ceased. But such is India’s clout in world cricket today that there’s little international cricket scheduled during the  time the IPL is played.

This year’s edition has produced some cracking games that have resulted in Super Overs. With virtually no cricket being played elsewhere, the talk of the town is about Ravichandran Ashwin not Mankading Aaron Finch and M.S. Dhoni losing his golden touch and much more. Sadly, there is very little representation from Sri Lanka in recent IPL events and this year there is just Isuru Udana.

Time was when the entire Sri Lankan team and  even the reserves featured in the IPL.  The  likes of Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene even captained IPL sides and did terrific jobs.

Business tycoon Mukesh Ambani paid almost US$ 1 million a year to acquire the services of Sanath Jayasuriya. There was fierce bidding for Jayasuriya, who is immensely popular in India and eventually Mumbai Indians paid him US$ 975,000. Always wonder how much Aravinda de Silva would have fetched if IPL was there during his time?

Other popular Sri Lankans in the IPL  were Lasith Malinga, Muttiah Muralitharan, T.M. Dilshan and Chaminda Vaas.  Even, Suraj Randiv, who played a handful of T-20 Internationals for Sri Lanka had an IPL contract with N. Srinivasan acquiring his services for his Chennai franchise.

It is no secret that it has been all downhill for Sri Lankan Cricket in the last decade and it is reflected by number of their players attracted by the IPL. Meanwhile, the South Africans, Australians and even Englishmen are in high demand for the franchise based T-20 tournament. We have made  some blunders down the line.

Of all three formats of the game the one in which Sri Lanka have done poorly is the T-20 format. Six years on from winning the World title, they have been so bad that they have got to play a qualifying round to enter the tournament proper in next year’s event.

While the money is attractive in the IPL, the extremely competitive nature of the tournament brings the best out of players and this is an area that Sri Lankans are missing out. You see the amount of high pressure games the Indian players are exposed to at a young age and then they turn up at the international level like ducks taking to water as they have already got a taste of the international flavour thanks to IPL.

That is why Sri Lanka’s efforts to conduct a franchise based tournament of their own needs to be commended.  We know that SLC’s effort  to launch an event has failed on a few occasions  now but they have got to start somewhere. Boards like West Indies, Australia, Pakistan and even Bangladesh have started a franchise based competition of their own in small scale and the players are benefiting by it.