A large number of Schools in Sri Lanka have stopped their cricket coaches salaries during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, Cricket Age reliably learns.
Sri Lanka’s school cricket is probably the best in the world, with majority of national team players comes through the system, despite a lackluster, pathetic domestic structure.
According to sources, as cricket, like other all activities, remains suspended due to the ongoing lockdown, some of the top ranked Schools in Sri Lanka like St. Thomas, Royal College, Ananda College, St. Peters have paid full salaries to their cricket coaches for the month of March-April.
However, majority of schools like DS Senanayake, Nalanda College have not paid only full salaries during lockdown time.
“We approached Honorable Education Minister Dallas Alahapperuma to look after this sensitive matter. The ministry has issued a directive to schools, instructing them to pay at least 25% of salary to these coaches” a prominent school coach told Cricket Age.
As per Education ministry regulations, School principals are authorized to appoint the coaches and their salaries comes from the all boys association and school development funds.
Dallas directive, however, has created another fiasco. Those schools, who were paying full salaries prior to the directive, now also mulling over 25%.
“Top ranked Schools in Sri Lanka pays up-to 2-3 Lakhs to their cricket coaches, while lower ranked Schools pays around 30-40 thousand. The cricket coaches are the pillars of Sri Lanka Cricket and it’s unfortunately that no one has bothered to think about over living in these crisis time” he added further.
