News
'Start winning games for the county rather than complaining,' de Silva to Sri Lanka players
NEWS
Follow UsSLC and players have not been on the same page since the board introduced performance-based contracts
Sri Lanka Cricket's (SLC) new performance-based incentive contracts has not gone down too well with the players, who have refused to put pen to paper on their new contracts. Senior players like Dimuth Karunratne, Angelo Mathews and Dinesh Chandimal, all of whom have led Sri Lanka at some point too have backed out and were not picked in the One-Day International (ODI) series against Bangladesh.
The architects of the new sets of contracts were Tom Moody, the Director of Cricket and also former batsman Aravinda de Silva, who is the head of the technical committee.
De Silva has indicated that the board will not budge when it comes to contracts and has advised the Sri Lankan players to start winning and stop complaining. "We discussed this matter in depth before we presented it to the players," de Silva told Daily News.
"Unlike in the past, we have increased the benefits three-fold than what it was but purely on the team's performance… If they win a Test series, we pay them USD 150,000 which was earlier limited to USD 50,000. It has to be a collective effort by the whole team," he added.
SLC have also added a slab for performance in T20s. "We also introduced a slab for the T20 format, which also runs up to a maximum of USD 50,000, which earlier didn't have any rewards at all," the 1996 World Cup winner said.
The three-fold incentives only come into play when they beat the No. 1 Test side. In fact, the players earned more when they beat a team ranked No. 6 or lower according to their previous contracts as opposed to the proposed ones.
"The most important fact is that they should get into the middle and play positive cricket and start winning games for the country rather than complaining," de Silva said, after Sri Lanka's series defeat at the hands of Bangladesh.
"This positive approach will encourage us to consider offering them more benefits, like some of the other countries in our region. If the team creates value, their incentives will also go up."