By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

The sudden decision to postpone the domestic Premier Super Eights and the Tier B cricket tournaments by Sri Lanka Cricket last Friday caught several clubs preparing for the resumption of cricket following the COVID-19 epidemic lockdown from March, totally by surprise.

The tournament was rescheduled to commence tomorrow and end on 4 August before the General Elections, and everything was in place with the matches and venue all finalised.  

Sri Lanka Cricket Secretary Mohan de Silva explaining why they had to postpone the tournament said: “About two to three weeks ago we invited the 24 clubs for a discussion just to educate them on the health guidelines that are required and also to announce resumption of the tournament.

“Then Air Force and the Navy made a request that with their involvement with the COVID-19 responsibilities their players have not been training and for us not to adhere to the Promotion and Demotion rule for this year.

“The only thing is we have got this tournament structure approved by the general membership and it is included in the constitution. We thought we could go ahead with the tournament and in fact spoke to the Ministry of Sports and we tried to see whether they could give us a directive to go ahead without the promotion and demotion rule being applied this year. 

“But they said they cannot do that and for us to take our own decision. Therefore we were compelled to go for an EGM to get these rules amended. We have called for an EGM on 28 July,” he said.

Explaining further De Silva stated: “Since then a number of other clubs have also written to us and we felt it is nothing but fair as some clubs engage players from different parts of the country and also have one or two overseas players also taking part. Because of that we thought this year to have an exemption and not have the Promotion and Relegation rule. The tournament will go on but there will be no promotions or demotions.”

“Earlier the final was going to be played for four days and this time we are reducing it to three days due to requests made by the club representatives who attended the meeting. 

That too is another amendment which has to go through the EGM,” he said.

Sri Lanka Cricket Tournament Committee Chairman Bandula Dissanayake said: “We tried to start the tournament in good faith but then we started getting signals that some people could put a spoke in the wheel, so we didn’t want to take a chance.”

“We earlier thought we could go ahead with the tournament and if anyone questioned to say that we had to make the changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has hit everyone quite unexpectedly. But the advice we got was ‘don’t take any chances’. In another six months’ time if everything comes back to normal people can forget that we went through a period like this and they can start creating problems,” he said.

Meanwhile the clubs had already started gearing themselves up for the resumption of the tournament spending a lot of time and money only to be told that it has been postponed.

“The clubs have genuine concern that is why they started to practice and without knowing when the next dates will be. 

So by early next week we will send out a circular and tell them about the dates. It’s not a big delay. I think within another two to three weeks later we can finish it off,” said Dissanayake.“We hope to have the tournament immediately after the General Election and finish it before the end of August. The draw will remain the same and the venues mostly will also remain the same,” he said.

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