Club cricket to be restructured

The Club Cricket tournaments and the Provincial Cricket Tournaments will run in line with one feeding the other from next year.

Sri Lanka Cricket Interim Committee member, Sidath Wettimuny speaking to The Sunday Times said from next year the club cricket structure would be well formatted to be run as a precursor to the Provincial Tournament.

Wettimuny stressed further saying that, “Club Cricket has been the back bone of our cricket right through, and it has to be formatted for it to be a precursor to the Provincial Cricket Tournament so that the selection at the main tournament could have a good feeder point.”

Meanwhile, a proposal has been forwarded to the SLC Cricket Committee that tier ‘A’ and ‘B’ of the premier league should be merged into one group and thereafter divided into four groups of five teams each. Each team will play against the other in the group once in round one.

Thereafter the two top teams of each group will form the Super Eight. The Super Eight will consist of two groups of four teams each. The teams in the respective groups will play each other once and the top two teams will play in the Super Eight final.

However unlike this year, all the matches will be played for a duration of three days and the same format would be adopted for the limited overs tournament as well.

The proposal also suggested that the league and the limited overs tournaments to be conducted concurrently in November-December this year. However, the under 23 tournament will be played in the same format as last year from July-September.

Sri Lanka Cricket has also paid a sum of Rs. 1.5 million to each club that took part in the tier ‘A’ tournament and a sum of Rs. 1 million for the clubs that played in the tier ‘B’ tournament. The other Rs. 3 million and Rs. 2 million allocated to the respective clubs will be released shortly.

However, clubs that made an impression in the league tournament have also been rewarded for their hard work. The winners of the tier ‘A’ tournament SSC (who also made it a triple this year) have won a sum of another Rs. 1.5 million while the runners up the same – Moors are in line to get a sum of Rs. 1 million. The third placed – Tamil Union and fourth placed CCC will get Rs. 500,000 and Rs.300,000 respectively. The tier ‘B’ winners Army have been allocated a sum of Rs 750,000-. The rest of the tier ‘B’ winners – Panadura SC (runners-up), Singha SC (3rd place), Air Force (4th place) are in line to receive Rs 500,000, Rs.200,000 and Rs.100,000 respectively.

It has also been decided to name Tharanga Paranavithana, as the Player of the tournament and the Best Batsman in the premier league this year. Among the three SSC captains this year Paranavithana has been a prolific scorer in the Premier League tournament, despite being repeatedly overlooked for national duty.

Not only the cricketers and the clubs, but behind the curtain people have also been looked after by the SLC. The SLC Interim Committee has also approved the revision of the following emoluments: Premier tier ‘A’ coach fee: Rs. 5,000,000, tier ‘B’ coach fee 4,000,000, Sara Coach fee: 3,360,000, Premier tier ‘A’ Administration Fee: 2,000,000, Tier ‘B’ administration 1,750,000-, Sara administration 2,625,000.