Jayasuriya averts crisis in midnight drama at SLC

A crisis that could have destroyed Sri Lanka’s cricket was averted at the last minute thanks to the timely intervention by chief national selector Sanath Jayasuriya while the whole of Sri Lanka was deep in their sleep on late Thursday night, a Sri Lanka team source told “Daily Mirror”.

“The national players refused to sign the “squad terms” for the forthcoming ICC World T20. These squad terms gives the ICC commercial right to use the player images during the tournament. But the players wanted to negotiate their payments as SLC is paid by ICC for getting these image rights. Since last year, SLC has scrapped a 20 percent share of this ICC payment that had been allocated to the players,” said the source.

However, SLC top officials refused to budge from their position at a meeting with players on Thursday afternoon and had asked the national players to sign the squad terms on Thursday itself. SLC officials had threatened that no player who refused to sign the ICC World T20 squad terms would be allowed to join the Bangladesh tour for which the team left Colombo in the early hours of yesterday. SLC had decided to take the stern step of even sending a second string team if the national players refused to sign.

Jayasuriya confirmed that he was involved in the negotiations and added that players agreed to sign the “Squad terms” but refused to elaborate further.
“I was at a meeting with the President till 11 o’clock last night. Angelo called me and said that they needed to meet me urgently before they took the final decision on whether to sign the terms or not. He told me that they would come to SLC headquarters at 1 a.m. in order to take a decision and then leave for Bangladesh. So, I went home at 11 and set the alarm and had a little sleep before going to cricket board office a little after one in the morning,” said Jayasuriya.

Jayasuriya said that Mathews and Chandimal who had discussions with SLC Ex-co members including himself earlier in the afternoon agreed to sign the “squad terms” in the night, but had apparently changed their mind later.

He said that his discussions were successful, but did not wish to announce what was discussed.

Sources however said that the entire national team discussed the issue for nearly two hours with Jayasuriya who had somehow influenced the players to sign the “squad terms” finally.

However some senior players still had reservations about it though they signed the terms and had handed over their concerns in a letter to the Jayasuriya, sources added.

Though “squad terms” are a pre-requisite for any ICC event, the disputed payments are a part of the players’ annual contract with the SLC. The annual contracts of the players end in February and according to the contracts the players signed last year, they do not have to sign fresh contracts this year as all existing contracts will be renewed automatically, unless there are changes in the contracted category of a player.

“Though players took up this issue before signing squad terms, the payment issue is actually related to the annual contracts. If they didn’t sign the squad terms, their contracts would not be valid as all their payments were specifically stated in their contracts,” said an SLC source.(Channaka de Silva)

Source: Daily Mirror (Sri Lanka)