Test captain Dimuth Karunaratne, senior players Angelo Mathews and Dinesh Chandimal, have refused to sign the new contracts issued by the board as they are unhappy with the pay cut that they received. The Sri Lankan cricketers expressed their shock and dismay in a joint statement.
The attorney representing almost all the elite Sri Lankan cricketers released a statement, which said that the pay cut is a lot to bear with. The pay structure SLC have offered nowhere close to some of the top cricketing nations worldwide. SLC has offered contracts to 24 players, and only six of them are in the top-most bracket (category A), and their annual wage is between USD 70,000 to 100,000.
The Sri Lankan players expressed their “shock and dismay” in a combined statement with the pay scale released by the SLC.
“These disclosures amount to a grave security concern to each and every player,”
the joint statement by the Sri Lankan players stated.
The Chairman of the SLC’s Cricket Advisory Committee Aravinda de Silva said the board had no option to slash the renumeration of the players after their poor performance in the last few years.
“We wanted to have a key performance indicator for the players so that we could evaluate them,”
Aravinda de Silva was quoted saying to the reporters.
The contract announcement and the players’ decision not to sign the contracts come at a critical juncture for SLC. They have a big white-ball series coming up against India, who have agreed to help them financially by touring for an ODI and T20I series in July later this year.
SLC has been struggling financially, and a big-ticket series against India will only help their cause. However, if the pay dispute is not resolved by then, it could affect India’s tour.
The SLC has given the players a deadline (3rd of June) to sign the contract. The Sri Lankan team is currently in Bangladesh for a three-match ODI series and will return home after the third ODI, which will be played on the 28th of May.
