Sri Lanka Cricket president feels they aren't playing India often enough

Ask the fans who are two teams that play more often than most and the answer would be Sri Lanka and India. But Sri Lanka Cricket president Thilanga Sumathipala doesn’t agree. A look at the numbers and these two teams have faced off in 12 Test, 15 T20Is and as many as 62 ODIs in the last decade which when compared to other opponents is quite a big number.

He fancies for the rivalry to be equivalent to the Ashes. Like the Aussies play England so often Sumathipalla wants to play India more often. Divulging further details he mentioned that they have a few bilateral series as agreed in the Future Tours Programme (FTP) of the ICC but will play more games than those.

“Australia is playing England in the Ashes many times. They play five Tests. So, we feel we should play more with India. They are the No 1 side. Except this tournament, all were bilateral series agreed by the FTP (Future Tours Programme). It sometimes happens that teams play each other frequently while some don’t play for 6-7 years due to FTP pressures,” Sumathipala said at the event where SLC inaugurated Sri Lanka’s new Brain Centre, for player development.

Brain centre

Addressing the need and importance of a Brain Center SLC announced the decision to set one up and will be developed with state of the art technology with respect to analytics as well as statistics. The team’s high-performance manager, Simon Willis, thinks that such an institution is the need of the hour for them to be able to frame and monitor better player development.

“We need a player management system. Whether it is injury management or player workload, we need research and development. We need a system to create fast bowlers in this country. We need to keep a system to monitor pitches, whether they are spinning and whether it is assisting in the development of the player,” Willis said.

SLPL a priority

At the same time, Sumathipala also mentioned that they are working towards the revival of Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL) that had to be scrapped as SLC failed to attract sponsors. He also announced the dates for the tournament this year – it is slated to be played between August 18 to September 10 i.e. after the conclusion of the Aisa Cup that will be hosted in India.

“We want to launch this year and are looking at a window for the next few years. SLPL was stopped half-way through the last time and we want to make it commercially viable this time. The dates are August 18 to September 10, which will be followed by the Asia Cup,” he said.

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