New-look National Super League: tournament to follow LPL style team names
The revamped National Super League (NSL) scheduled to start on January 20 with the 50-over format will see a big change of the names of the teams being switched to the cities they have been named after from the original provincial based titles.
Initially, this two-format tournament, consisting of four day matches also, formally called as Provincial Tournament, was all set to go with the provincial names decided for the five main teams. However, in a big change, Sri Lanka Cricket along with the tournament committee, after reconsidering decided to rename following suit of the Lanka Premier League (LPL) title styles.
Accordingly, the teams for this would be the five main clubs based on the availability of the infrastructure, and grouped into the five different cities – Colombo, Kandy, Dambulla, Jaffna and Galle. These major cities would be the representation of SSC, NCC, CCC, Tamil Union and Colts Cricket Club.
The white-ball fixtures are scheduled to run for a month, at the conclusion of which, the four dayers will start. For the red-ball version, the tournament organisers are likely to slot it around mid-February. The NSL will function entirely as the selection platform for the national squads for the Limited Over and Test squads and the LPL will remain as the talent search for the T20 format.
The venues for the shorter format would be the SSC, Tamil Union, Kandy and Pallekelle. The longest format is to be staged in the Test venues SSC, Tamil Union, Galle and Pallekelle. Country’s largest cricket ground R. Premadasa Stadium has been missed as the stadium is undergoing renovations.
The tournament format for the 50-overs would be, each team playing eights games, home and away, while for the four day it all would be at Test centres. For the 50-overs, the team reaching the final will finish with nine games. However, the plan for the future of the longest version also is to host in home-away format.
What the tournament committee led by Dodanwela and four others have done is, taking the rest of the 21 clubs and clustering them into the five main clubs.
This tournament too, exactly as the LPL, will have coaches, support staff and even selectors – all picked by Mahela Jayawardena, consultant national coach, the technical advisory committee, CEO of SLC alongside the national selectors. Each team will be having a provincial level selector, who all will be overlooked by the national selectors.
There are 80 contracted players from the national, ‘A’ and emerging teams. Each cluster will be having 15 to 18 national cricketers. The tournament committee also ensured one group will be represented by a team from the forces and one outstation club.
| Cities and clustering | |
| Colombo: SSC (Saracens, Negombo CC, Police SC, Sebastianites) Jaffna: Tamil Union (Ragama CC, Lankan CC, Kalutara TC, Bloomfield) Kandy: NCC (Chilaw Marians, Ace Capital, Air Force, Kandy Customs) Dambulla: CCC (BRC, Baduraliya SC, Navy SC, Nugegoda SWC, Kurunegala Youth CC) Galle: Colts (Army SC, Galle CC, Panadura SC, Moors SC) |