Sri Lanka Cricket hopes T20 league will be “spectacular”

Sri Lanka Cricket says it will stage its own Twenty20 cricket league in August, more than a year after it was postponed due to possible losses due to a pull out of Indian players.

The first edition of Sri Lanka Premier League was originally scheduled to be played in July last year.

SLC president Upali Dharmadasa announced that the league will start on August 10 and hoped that it will be a “spectacular event.”

It will feature seven provincial teams which will adhere to a compulsory ruling of no more than six overseas players in each squad. It will be mandatory for each team to field only four overseas players in the playing eleven, whilst the remaining seven players will all be Sri Lankans, with one of those to be an under-21 cricketer.

SLC Secretary Nishantha Ranathunga said, “They have written to all the boards last week and most of the countries have shown interest. But it is too premature to announce the names.”

He said he hoped that Indian players, who were unavailable for last year’s tournament, will take part because it, “will add a lot of glamour and value to the tournament.”

India barred its players from taking part in the Sri Lanka Premier League last year, saying the tournament was being organised by a private company.

Twelve Indian players including internationals Praveen Kumar, Munaf Patel and Ravichandran Ashwin were among those who had been expected to take part in the tournament.

Without the participation of the Indian players, tournament organisers and Sri Lanka Cricket would have found it difficult to secure lucrative contracts from Indian broadcasters.

Dharmadasa said the SLC has taken a leading role in the running of the league this time around, amending the role of the Singapore-based Somerset Entertainment Ventures. He declined to discuss the changes.

Sri Lanka’s new cricket board which was elected in January faces a financial crisis having incurred millions of dollars of debt after building two new cricket grounds and renovating another for last year’s World Cup, which Sri Lanka co-hosted with India and Bangladesh.

Previous cricket officials have also been accused of corruption and mismanagement.

SLC has not had an elected body for seven years and political appointees have run the administration. However the authorities were compelled to hold an election after the International Cricket Council last year made them mandatory for all national cricket boards.