The Cricket Playing Clubs in the island are up in arms with SLC’s move to change the format of local cricket.
The local clubs have written twice to SLC – once seeking permission to run a T 20 Club tournament and then followed it up with a letter seeking clarification about the move to change the format making way for the Provincial Tournaments while clustering the existing clubs to suit the provincial selections.
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| How long will Club Cricket in Sri Lanka survive? |
Eleven leading Cricket playing Clubs – Badureliya Cricket Club, Bloomfield Cricket and Athletic Club, Chilaw Marians Cricket Club, Colombo Colts Cricket Club, Colombo Cricket Club, Lankan Cricket Club, Nondescripts Cricket Club, Ragama Cricket Club, Saracens Cricket Club, Sinhalese Sports Club and the Tamil Union Cricket and Athletic Club in unison have shown their reservation about the new SLC move and have questioned the wisdom of making a move of this nature – selling the rights of Provincial cricket Tournament for a period of five years.
They also have questioned the SLC about the move to have foreign players. The Clubs say that this move will further impede the chances of the local cricketers.
Elaborating on the matter Michael de Zoysa – Chairman Cricket House Committee, Sinhalese Sports Club said “In short the Clubs want to know how they are going to benefit from this move. The SLC met us on an earlier occasion to explain the modalities of this move and said that the Clubs will stand to benefit from this move, but, did not elaborate on that and we are still in the dark about it.”
De Zoysa explained that even some of the clubs fear that the clustering system will force some of their clubs playing members move and this would end up in a huge exodus. “Even now though being SSC, we are finding it difficult to find sponsors, just imagine after a move like this it will be even more difficult to find sponsors and cricket may die a natural death in the clubs.”
He explained even now some of the membership is looking at ways of cutting Cricket out of the Club’s activities as it is such an expensive game to sustain.
Sri Lanka cricket entered into this five year agreement with Somerset Entertainment Ventures Singapore Private Limited on 21st May 2010, even without the prior approval of the Interim Committee.
The document put forward to the committee by the Marketing Division said: “We have not worked with this company prior to this nor are fully aware of their background to comment on their credibility. However considering their positive, long term commitment, we recommend that we accept the sponsorship offer whilst securing the future payments in the form of a bank guarantee.
The five staggered payments are going to be – year 2010 -- $300,000/-, year 2011 $325,000/-, year 2012-- $350,000/-, year 2013-- $375,000/- and year 2014-- $400,000/-. The hurry for signing of this document was taken into consideration of the sponsor’s need to market the Wayamba Team for the Champions League tournament. As a result SLC singed the controversial deal where the team had to carry the sex enhancing logo of “Musli Power”.
At the same time inside sources commented by signing the agreement SLC have lost their rights for marketing their products for five years, whilst previously only the sponsorship rights were offered to any entrepreneur. He also pointed out that the question was that the bid document for this was posted only in the SLC website and not in any other media and the bids were received directly by the Interim Committee secretary via e-mail (when they generally have to come in sealed form), but, not the CEO or the Addl. CEO who are empowered to handle such documents. |
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