Cricket: SLC postpones World XI Charity Match

Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) announced that the World XI vs. Sri Lanka XI Charity Match which was to be played on September 8, has been postponed.

SLC made this decision on Friday (25) but made the announcement earlier this week. 

"The Technical Committee (TC) of SLC has recommended postponing the T20 game, which would have been played at the tail end of the ongoing India series as the Sri Lanka national team, of which several players were slated to be a part of the Sri Lankan XI have been playing back-to-back cricket since May when they travelled to the UK for two warm up games against Scotland ahead of the Champions Trophy, and returned to Sri Lanka into a 5 X ODI, 1 Test Zimbabwe Series followed immediately by the ongoing 3 X Test, 5 X ODI, and single T20 India series. It is also worthy of note that the Champions Trophy was preceded by the Domestic Super Provincial Tournament, making for 5 months of back-to-back cricket.
With the focus of the Administration strongly on Player Management and injury prevention with the 2019 World Cup in mind, the TC have evaluated the risk of injury and burnout as being “unwise at this juncture” prompting the Executive Committee to postpone the Charity game to a later date," announcing the postponement SLC Chief Executive Officer Ashley de Silva stated.

"We are sorry to announce the postponement of the World XI game which was to be played on September 8 at the R. Premadasa Stadium. The Technical Committee of SLC has evaluated the factors involved and feel quite rightly that we need to give our players a break after several months of intense cricket.
In addition to this, a couple of key players like Mahela Jayawardena and Kumar Sangakkara are also not available on this date, so we felt that we could afford to wait a while and play this game at a more conducive time."

"I must extend my sincere thanks to the players who confirmed their participation - Robin Uthappa, Suresh Raina and Yoosuf Pathan of India, Shaid Afridi, Misbha Ul Haq and Abdur Razak of Pakistan, Tyml Mills of England, Graham Cremer of Zimbabwe, Ronchi Luke of New Zealand and JP Dumini and Farhaan Berhardien of South Africa amongst others as well the respective Boards for the support extended."