Sri Lanka players refuse to sign SLC contracts

The Sri Lanka national team seems to be in a spot of bother now. The national team players failed to reach a compromise with the Sri Lanka Cricket board recently. The board had decided to introduce a performance-based pay for the central contracts. This meant a direct pay cut for the players who had fixed pay in the previous contracts.

A player in the top category received a contract fee of US $165,000; in category 2, US $100,000; US $70,000 in category 3; and US $40,000 in category 4 during the 2015-2016 contracts. This contract ended in February early this year. The sponsors of ICC and the ACC events also yielded a ten percent share in the previous contract.

Now, the board’s new top administrators decided to cut down this revenue model where a player in the top category will now receive a reduced annual contract fee of US$ 125,000 as opposed to the US$ 165,000 received last year. A player in category 2 will receive US$ 80,000 while the contract fee for category 3 has been set at US$ 60,000. A category 4 player will receive an annual fee of US $ 40,000 and US$ 20,000 per player in category 5.

The performance-based incentives can be visible in the Test domain. Test match fee has been brought down to US$ 5000 from US$ 7500. However, this amount will be increased to US$ 10,000, if they win the Test match. While the move was taken in order to motivate the players, the players have not received it with pleasure yet.

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In the limited overs, there are changes too. The ODI and T20 match fees stand the same at US $ 3000 and US$ 2000 respectively. However, in order to create competitiveness and encourage individual performance, the Board decided to offer US $ 5000 for every century scored and a five-wicket haul taken. In T20’s, this has been increased a little more to US$ 2500, meaning a century or a five-wicket-haul will get the players an additional US $ 7500.

The senior members of the team, Angelo Mathews, Rangana Herath and Dinesh Chandimal met the SLC CEO Ashley de Silva yesterday. However, the negotiations didn’t go the way the players wanted. As a result, they refused to sign the contracts. Now, another meeting between the players and the administrators has been scheduled to take the matter further.