by Rex Clementine

Time was when franchise cricket was frowned upon. That was a decade or so ago. The reason for this is that unscrupulous player agents used underarm tactics to get their players released from national commitments. There was very little Sri Lanka Cricket could do as franchise owners like N. Srinivasan, at one point cricket’s most powerful man as Secretary of Board of Control for Cricket in India, dictated terms and one could only feel sorry for the plight of SLC.

In 2009, SLC even had to cancel a tour of England as players were up in arms. With key figures like Srinivasan on their side, players had their wish. Those players have now moved on and at present hold key positions in administration.  Now they say things differently.

Ten years ago, we just had the IPL but at present franchise cricket tournaments have mushroomed and there’s something that’s happening somewhere monthly. The IPL remains the big draw and although not many Sri Lankans are getting drafted in like they used to, there’s demand from other franchise league competitions.

Wanindu Hasaranga is the biggest draw as he’s world’s number one ranked bowler in T-20 cricket and the board has given him No Objection Certificates whenever there’s been no international commitments.

That should be the case with other players too. Many of us do not endorse everything that Bhanuka Rajapaksa does but his premature retirement could have been the result of him not being able to get frequent NOCs from the board.

Bhanuka is a contracted player and he requires SLC’s clearance to take part in franchise tournaments. Last year he missed out on a couple of T-20 leagues and he may have incurred losses around US$ 60,000 or more.

SLC’s plight is twofold; one is that they need all their contracted players fresh for national commitments and the other is that they can only pick players for national duty depending on their performance in domestic cricket and not on overseas competition. So they have got to strike a balance between the two.

One way to address the issue is to give players decent contracts. The fringe players who have not got elite contracts like Bhanuka Rajapaksa and Angelo Perera are on annual contracts with SLC that offers them US$ 6000. That’s Rs. 1.2 million and virtually it would come to Rs. 100,000 a month. That sum is not sufficient for someone like Bhanuka to feed his eight dogs leave alone looking after a family.

Another way of dealing with the problem is to allow players a minimum of say two overseas league tournaments when there are no international commitments. Surely, a T-20 specialist will be better off playing overseas league tournaments than let’s say, making himself available for First Class cricket.

We have the classic example of Isuru Udana, a T-20 specialist, who retired prematurely from international cricket so that he could be a freelancer playing franchise cricket in different countries.

Having said all that, Rajapaksa has been in public attention for reasons other than fans would remember him for. He is no doubt a player with immense potential but how many matches has he won Sri Lanka? Is it more than a handful? A player is doing little favours for himself by burning bridges. We have seen too many of them and let’s hope that we start talking of Bhanuka more and more for his cricketing excellence. Not two kilometer run, skin folds tests or NOCs.