A dark cloud of uncertainty is hovering around Sri Lanka’s white-ball tour to the UK against England later this month, with players from the Island nation refusing to sign the tour contracts offered by Sri Lanka Cricket.
Declining the tour contracts is part of the men’s team cricketers’ larger resistance to the SLC’s newly adopted annual contracts’ programme. The players don’t think there is enough transparency in how the new scheme works and it wouldn’t be giving the players their just rewards.
Tour contracts have been used to pay the players for a succession of series since last October when SLC last offered them the annual central contracts. However, for the forthcoming England series, the players have announced a major tussle with the board, feeling they aren’t compensated well enough by this scheme.
The SLC is following a grading system to arrive at different contractual sums to be given to the players who, however, have conveyed that the workings of the system aren’t made clear to them.
Initially, 24 players had made their concerns about the scheme of payment official, but that number has now increased to 38. They’ve refused to sign the tour contracts, which could jeopardise the three ODIs and three T20Is series against England.
“Because of the problems with the transparency of the ratings system devised by SLC, the players will not sign the [tour contract],”
the release signed by 38 top players said.
Nishan Premathiratne, the players’ lawyer in the matter, said besides the principal objection to the tour contracts, there is also a legal grievance against the same.
“The tour contract also refers to matters of the annual [main] contract for 2021, which is yet unsigned. In the event, the annual contract is not settled and a dispute is pending, the validity of the tour contract referring to an unsigned contract is also an issue.”
Premathiratne told ESPNcricinfo.
Apart from the lack of transparency, the bone of contention for the players are also the other metrics that SLC’s scheme takes into account. It also focuses on leadership, professionalism and future performance/adaptability. Sri Lanka players feel that the only areas of concern for the board should be the performance and fitness of cricketers.
Since SLC offered the latest annual contracts to just 24 players, a list which reduced from 30 in the previous cycle, players want the board to also compensate those 14 who have joined them in their quest for fair rewards.
“In addition, the players have decided they will not sign the contracts until players who have performed well in past years are looked after fairly,”
the statement said.
The new scheme was drawn up by a technical committee, which was headed by former batsman Aravinda de Silva and SLC’s new director of cricket Tom Moody. There is only a three-day window available to negotiate the issue at hand, with Sri Lankan players scheduled to depart for England on Wednesday.
