Sri Lanka Cricket team will be returning from England today after embarassing and disastrous tour. If the embarrassing thrashing at the hands of England wasn’t enough, now a new problem is staring them. According to the reports coming in from Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) headquarters, if Kusal Perera led team doesn’t sign controversial central contracts on their arrival, selectors will pick second-string team to play the 3 match ODI & T20 series against India.
According to a report by Sri Lankan newspaper Daily FT, Chairman of Selectors Pramodya Wickramasinghe has declared that if the players say they cannot sign the contract before the Indian series, the next option left to him and his selectors is to pick players from the 39 contracted players – who are not part of the team currently in England.
“These players are currently practising and playing matches and we will consider them for selection for the Indian series. We have still not selected the squad for the series with India, we will do that after Sunday’s third and final ODI against England,” said Wickramasinghe.
Sri Lanka Cricketers are yet to sign the national contracts offered by the board. Even before travelling to England, players signed just voluntary declaration forms. It was decided that during the England tour the contentious contract issue will be sorted which till date is pending. SLC has now announced that no voluntary declaration forms will be accepted in the future – which clearly means either players tow the lines of SLC or they will not be picked for the squad for the India series.
“The Executive Committee on the advice of the Technical and Advisory Committee will have to decide whether the players will have to sign a tour contract. Probably that is the only option left because we are not going ahead with voluntary declaration forms anymore,” said CEO of SLC – Ashley de Silva.
“We will not want to go ahead with any voluntary declaration forms in the future. It was the first time a team had left overseas signing such a document.”
India Tour of Sri Lanka – What will be the players stance, what options SLC has ?
India Tour of Sri Lanka – Will Sri Lanka play Second-String side? The players are on a sticky wicket after humiliating performance in England. But the report claims players are unlikely to change their stands.
SLC made a press announcement made on Thursday that they have signed 39 players on contract categories of ‘Senior’, ‘A’ team and Emerging Squad. These players have been training in the separate groups in Dambulla and Colombo and they stay available for selection for the upcoming tours.
The interesting part is neither test team captain Dimuth Karunaratne or Angelo Matthews or any other big name is part of the list. All of these top players along with players in England have refused to sign contracts and are not part of these camps.
So now the big question is what stance the SLC is going to take if the contract issue is not resolved before the Indian series? Would they play a second-string Sri Lanka team against an Indian side ? Answer for now is most likely yes – but the situation may change once Sri Lanka team arrives in Colombo.
India Tour of Sri Lanka – Shikhar Dhawan: Sri Lanka squad is still undecided but the visiting Indian team has started their training in Colombo. After spending 17 days in quarantine — 14 days in Mumbai and 3 days in Sri Lanka — Shikhar Dhawan-led Team India finally stepped outside to enjoy a training session ahead of their limited-overs series against Kusal Perera’s side, beginning July 13. Under the watchful eyes of head coach Rahul Dravid, Hardik Pandya, Suryakumar Yadav & Co cleaned up their rustiness in the hotel lawn.
Shikhar Dhawan & Co were divided into small groups and asked to play footvolley before they continued the rivalry in poolvolley. All of that was part of their physical conditioning routine as many of them have not had an outdoor session since the IPL 2021 was suspended on May 4.
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