Sports

Let sanity prevail

Published

5 years ago

2021/05/2

by Rex Clementine

Sri Lanka Cricket has played down the ongoing pay crisis with national cricketers, telling us that everything will be tickety-boo after the Bangladesh series as they are currently negotiating with the players. But the fact remains that the players refused to sign the contracts and many of them are angry at the suggested pay cut. The new contracts are so flawed that some players would be forced to go through 200% pay cuts.

No doubt these are testing times as SLC has rightly pointed out. The board’s finances have suffered major losses due to the pandemic. But if there’s going to be a pay cut, let it begin from the top. The CEO’s salary of Rs. 1.8 million a month has not been slashed. But he wants players to take a pay cut. The CEO is not covering himself in glory these days as we witnessed during the COPE hearing recently.

In fact, the CEO’s salary has tripled in the last five years. In that scenario, there’s no rationale in asking the players to get a pay cut while the head of the organization enjoys his perks. It is very easy to say that this was a suggestion from one of the sub committees and pass the buck. But the CEO has been in that position for a decade now and before that as Director Cricket Operations for a considerable time. He should have given a piece of his mind to whoever the mastermind, who wasn’t thinking clearly in drafting the contract.

If the proposed contracts go through, Suranga Lakmal, a former captain and a respected senior player, would be earning an annual retainer worth around US$ 45,000, which is close to Rs. nine million. The CEO, at the same time would be earning over Rs. 21 million. How can that be fair? Whoever who prepared this contract is prejudiced.

Apart from a significant reduction in the annual retainers, the seniority payment too has been completely taken off. The mastermind who drafted these contracts is said to be a former captain, who in his prime earned as much as Rs. 100 million annually from SLC. When the board wanted this amount reduced, he had a bone to pick with the administration and together with his crooked agent, who ran a cricket website, sought political intervention. Time was when some of our captains spent more time at Temple Trees than the time they spent at the crease. Literally, they were asking for the pound of flesh and had it their way.

The board’s counter argument then was that they wanted a fair share of revenue go to domestic cricketers in order stop the brain drain as professional cricketers were regularly traveling to England and Australia to earn a living. SLC failed miserably. Senior players were powerful.

Now the roles have been reversed. Since the mastermind is in administration currently, he feels domestic cricketers need to be looked after and hell with elite players. The poacher turned gamekeeper should not be allowed to get away with his ill-advised policies. Let him take his dumb, nonsensical and undiplomatic policies elsewhere.

The players are up in arms. They are contractually bound to remain silent or else all hell would have broken loose by now as the recommended pay structure has taken things back to what it was 20 years ago.

Having said all these, it must be mentioned that players did need a shake up. The conduct of some of them in recent years has been unbecoming of professional sportsmen. Take the two kilometer run for example, which they are supposed to run in eight minutes and 30 seconds. Look at how many of them fail this basic drill. Or the skin-fold test, which you can pass with bit of discipline in your food intake and social life. Someone who is as young as Avishka Fernando, who has got a huge future ahead of himself, failing a simple fitness tests is awful.

Then there are allegations of players teaming up with trainers and physiotherapists and submitting false fitness reports. No wonder the ICC has categorized Sri Lanka as the most corrupt nation in cricket. Rarely a month passes without us hearing Sri Lankan cricketers either being charged for drunk driving, knocking someone on the road or being involved in a fight (some fights are now fought in social media). The new contracts ensure that players get penalized substantially if their conduct is not up to the mark.

Discipline is a must in all walks of life. So whilst retaining aspects such as minimum fitness standards and conduct of players in public, the pay cut that has no rationale needs to be reviewed.

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Sri Lanka bowl first in semi final clash against India

Published

5 hours ago

2026/10/1

Priyan

Sri Lanka won the toss and elected to bowl first in the Asian games semifinal clash against India.

Sri Lanka XI: Lasith Croospulle, Sineth Jayawardene, Sohan de Livera (wk), Ashen Bandara, Sahan Arachchige (c), Nuwanidu Fernando, Chamika Karunaratne, Wanuja Sahan, Tharindu Rathnayake, Binura Fernando, Vijayakanth Viyaskanth

India XI: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson (wk), Shreyas Iyer (c), Ishan Kishan, Tilak Varma, Shivam Dube, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Ravi Bishnoi, Jasprit Bumrah

Sports

New constitution puts SLC under greater public scrutiny

Published

10 hours ago

2026/10/1

Sahan Weerasooriya

President’s Counsel Dinal Philips emphasized that the new SLC constitution will modernize the sport.

by Rex Clementine

President’s Counsel Dinal Phillips has defended a key provision in the proposed new constitution for Sri Lanka Cricket that allows one of the appointed members, rather than an elected representative, to serve as Chairman of the Board. There have been concerns that a former cricketer will not be able to be appointed as Chairman of SLC if the new constitution comes to effect, but Philips said that the country needed to move on with times.

Successive governments have promised sweeping reforms at the cricket board but delivered precious little. The NPP government, however, has taken concrete steps towards overhauling the administration, with a new constitution now in the public domain.

The proposed constitution has been gazetted and will be debated in Parliament, while the Supreme Court will determine whether its provisions are consistent with the laws of the country. Stakeholders will also have an opportunity to challenge provisions they consider contentious.

Once the legal and parliamentary process is completed, the new constitution will come into force, making SLC answerable to Parliament and by extension, to the public.

“The Chairman of the Board will be from among the appointed individuals because there needs to be a great deal of independence on the Board. You are talking about a Rs. 16 billion organisation,” Phillips told reporters at SLC headquarters yesterday.

Phillips has been a prominent figure in cricketing circles in recent years. He represented his Royal College schoolmate Kusal Janith Perera during the legal battle that eventually cleared the batsman following a doping suspension. He is also a former President of Tamil Union, one of SLC’s controlling clubs.

“You have to have people with sound accounting backgrounds, legal expertise, marketing and IT knowledge involved in running your cricket board. All those areas are covered in this structure,” Phillips said.

“The powers will also be vested in the CEO of SLC and he will run the business of the organisation. The Board of Directors will execute policy.”

Phillips, together with fellow legal expert Upul Kumaraperuma, played a key role in drafting the proposed constitution.

“Look at other parts of the world. We don’t want to be left behind; we want to move with the rest of the world. These are serious, long-term steps. We are trustees for 20 million people. We have been asked questions about what is happening to our cricket. We want to raise the bar,” Phillips added.

SLC chief Eran Wickramaratne was also present at the briefing and faced questions over the national team’s disappointing tour of England, where Sri Lanka were whitewashed 3-0 in the T20I series before enduring an inconsistent ODI campaign.

“We want to see the team winning, no doubt about that. But we don’t have concerns about individuals, say, for example, Gary Kirsten. It requires time to build,” Wickramaratne said.

“In 2011, we were ranked number four in Tests, number three in ODIs and number three in T20s. If you look at where we are now, we are towards the lower end; seven, eight or nine.

“That decline has happened over a period of ten to 15 years. You have to be realistic. Any coach who comes in cannot change things overnight. But we are on the right road.”

Sports

Gold winner Tharanga gets brand-new Honda Vezel from SLAAJ

Published

10 hours ago

2026/10/1

Sahan Weerasooriya

Rumesh Tharanga received a brand-new Honda Vezel during a felicitationceremony held in Nagoya Japan.

by Reemus Fernando

‎

The Sri Lanka Automobile Association in Japan (SLAAJ) awarded a brand-new Honda Vezel to gold medallist Rumesh Tharanga at a felicitation ceremony held for the Sri Lankan team that competed at the Asian Games in Nagoya, Japan.

‎The gift was presented at a ceremony, held on the eve of the track and field team’s departure from Nagoya.

Sri Lanka’s team captained by Thranga concluded the track and field campaign on Tuesday.

‎Tharanga’s gold was the solitary medal won by the team.

‎”We decided to reward every Sri Lankan athlete who wins a gold medal with a brand-new vehicle. We invited all Sri Lankan athletes taking part in the Games to the felicitation, and at the time of the event, only Tharanga had won gold,” Nishantha Meegalla, Vice President of the Nagoya Prefecture of the Sri Lanka Business Council of Japan, told The Island.

‎Nishantha said that Tharanga will be able to get his vehical from the Hambantota Port.

‎He said that sea freight charges up to Hambantota port will be taken care of on behalf of Tharanga and it would be incumbent upon the government authorities to decide to waive off any taxes for the newly crowned Asian champion to receive the gift.

‎Tharanga, the world’s top-ranked javelin thrower this season, won Sri Lanka’s first-ever javelin medal at the Asian Games on Monday, sealing the historic victory with a throw of 88.55 metres.

‎With his Asian Games triumph the 23-year-old capped a remarkable season where he claimed multiple global titles including the Diamond League title, Commonwealth Games gold and the Ultimate Championship trophy.