In a unprecedented move, 24 Sri Lanka’s leading cricketers led by Test captain Dimuth Karunaratne along with host of senior players, including Dinesh Chandimal and Angelo Mathews, have refused to sign the central contracts offered by the board which they believe is far less compared to other countries.
If the dispute is not sorted in due course of time, it could well affect Sri Lanka’s bilateral series with India in July, where six white ball matches is expected to fill the coffers of already CASH-RICH cricket board of the island nation.
A statement from the attorney representing almost all top players including the Test skipper Karunaratne, Mathews, Chandimal and others said remuneration proposed to players are one third compared to some other cricket playing nations as per Federation of International Cricket Association (FICA) report.
The 24 contracted players have been categorized as per their total score into four grades namely – A,B,C,D with 3 tiers in each category. In the categories released only six players are in the category A and their annual pay ranges between USD 70,000 to 100,000. Dhananjaya De Silva and Niroshan Dickwella were officially named the highest-paid players with an annual retainer of 100,000 USD. The number of annually contracted national players have been brought down from 32 to 24 from this year.
The contract grade and retainer amount (In US$) is as below:
| Player Name | Contract Grade | Retainer Amount (US$) |
| Dhananjaya de Silva | A1 | 100,000 |
| Niroshan Dickwella | A1 | 100,000 |
| Kusal Perera | A2 | 80,000 |
| Angelo Mathews | A2 | 80,000 |
| Kusal Mendis | A3 | 70,000 |
| Dimuth Karunaratne | A3 | 70,000 |
| Suranga Lakmal | B1 | 65,000 |
| Dasun Shanaka | B1 | 65,000 |
| Wanindu Hasaranga | B2 | 60,000 |
| Lasith Embuldeniya | B2 | 60,000 |
| Pathum Nissanka | B3 | 55,000 |
| Lahiru Thirimanne | B3 | 55,000 |
| Dushmantha Chameera | C1 | 50,000 |
| Kasun Rajitha | C1 | 50,000 |
| Dinesh Chandimal | C2 | 45,000 |
| Lakshan Sandakan | C2 | 45,000 |
| Vishwa Fernando | C3 | 40,000 |
| Isuru Udana | C3 | 40,000 |
| Oshada Fernando | D1 | 35,000 |
| Ramesh Mendis | D1 | 35,000 |
| Lahiru Kumara | D2 | 30,000 |
| Danushka Gunathilaka | D2 | 30,000 |
| Ashen Bandara | D3 | 25,000 |
| Akila Dananjaya | D3 | 25,000 |
In this scenario, to find the authenticity of Sri Lanka players claims, Cricket Age conducted a comprehensive Investigation of two of world cricket richest boards – the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and England Cricket Board (ECB) – offered annual salary to it’s players. Shockingly, in the Investigation, Sri Lanka players claims were found 100% true!
Here is the annual Player Contracts for Team India (Senior Men) for the period from October 2020 to September 2021:
The payment structures has been divided into four categories with Grade A+ contract earning players INR 7 crore ((USD 7,37,000), Grade A earning players 5 crore ((USD 5,37,000), Grade B earning players 3 crore ((USD 3,37,000), and Grade C earning players 1 crore (USD 1,37,000) for the aforementioned time period.
A total of 28 cricketers were awarded central contracts in four categories. India captain Virat Kohli, vice-captain Rohit Sharma, and fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah were retained in the A+ category list.
Meanwhile, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Rishabh Pant and Hardik Pandya were all placed under Grade A contract.
Wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha, pacers Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshar Kumar, and Shardul Thakur and opening batsman Mayank Agarwal were all placed under Grade B contract.
Kuldeep Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Deepak Chahar, Shubman Gill, Hanuma Vihari, Axar Patel, Shreyas Iyer, Washington Sudnar, Yuzvendra Chahal and Mohammed Siraj were all placed under Group C.
So, Just for comparative analysis, India’s group C (lowest category) centrally contracted players annually earn a retainership fee of Rs 1 crore (USD 1,37,000), means USD 37,000 more than Sri Lanka’s highest-paid players Dhananjaya De Silva and Niroshan Dickwella with an annual retainer of USD 100,000.
The annual Player Contracts for England players is even more whooping! An English cricketer with red-ball contracts draw more money than India’s Grade A+ players. Those with ECB’s red-ball contracts have a salary of around £700,000 per year (Rs 7.22 crore approx). The amount of Rs 7.22 crore makes England Test captain Joe Root the highest-paid captain. No just Root, Jofra Archer is also among players with a red-ball contract and draws more salary than the Indian captain. Apart from Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah also have Grade A+ contracts. They have a salary of Rs 7 crore each.
So, it’s clear that comparing Sri Lanka cricketers annual salary with England and India’s men’s players will be a joke, as it’s quite evident that they are getting paid in peanuts in comparison to these two countries players!
However, even if we compare Sri Lanka men’s cricketers annual salary with Indian women’s cricketers, it is equally embarrassing!
As per Indian women’s cricketers’ central contracts for 2021-22 season, the likes of Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana and Poonam Yadav being placed in the top bracket (A), earning Rs. 50 lakh each (USD 71,000), which is more than 20 (out of 24) Sri Lanka men’s cricketers annual salary!
Interestingly, the below per new pay scheme for Sri Lanka players has been devised by Tom Moody, the Director of Cricket, in consultation with the Aravinda de Silva-headed Cricket Committee. Shockingly, in his latest stint as the director of Sri Lanka Cricket, Moody himself will fetch a whopping salary of 200,000 US$ a year during his 3-years contract with the board!
“Sri Lanka Cricket has in the past paid local and foreign coaches significant sums of money (salaries of approximately over 7 Million Rupees per month) and all those facts have to be placed in context when attempting to highlight and portray payments to be made to Sri Lankan cricketers” says a statement issued by Nishan Sydney Premathiratne, Attorney-at-Law representing all 24 players.
However, as Sri Lanka players are not in the dominant position to negotiate (largely due to team’s below per performance in last few years across all formats, which was not their fault), the board, in the influence of so called Cricket Committee and so called cricket director, has set a June 3 deadline for its protesting players to sign annual contracts.
“The plan might be to bring more henchmen like Charlie Austin, Simon Willis into the system and offer them million dollars packages, from this slashed money from players contracts” a Sri Lanka cricket expert told Cricket Age.
Laughably, even though the entire country is almost closed, with SLC, it’s high performance centre in Khetterama and all cricket clubs are also shut down due to COVID crisis, Moody is in Sri Lanka, at work!
“He (Moody) had no other choice but to come to Sri Lanka after IPL postponed. The Australian players, coaches, match officials and commentators were transported from India to the Maldives, as their government has Imposed travel pause pertaining to flights from India. Moody considered it as an opportunity to add some more days in his mandatory annual stay in Sri Lanka, so instead of going Maldives with his colleagues, he arrived in the Island” an Insider at SLC had earlier told Cricket Age.
It is noteworthy that after being hired for the top post, Moody has so far stayed in Sri Lanka only for few days, that too for a showoff press conference before his departure to India for the IPL, where he is the director of Sunrisers Hyderabad. Now again, as IPL has ended abruptly, Moody is fulfilling his Sri Lanka’s duty, thanks to a forced stay! The three year contract requires Moody to spend 110 days in Sri Lanka annually although initially the discussion was for him to spend 180 days in Colombo. However, the parties had settled for little over 100 days.
