The majority of domestic clubs, especially from the outstations, have termed Sri Lanka Cricket’s (SLC) newly launched National Super League (NSL) a total garbage, while accusing of giving ill treatment to non-Colombo players and promoting only Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC) cricketers.
Earlier this week, SLC announced NSL, while projecting it as Sri Lanka’s ‘Elite Domestic Cricketing Competition,’ which, once in operation, will act as the primary competition for National Selections.
To hoodwink the stakeholders and cricket fans it was falsely established that the 26 Major Clubs playing in the first-class premier club competition have been clustered under the 5 Teams and players for the respective NSL teams will come only from the allocated clubs and not from outside.
The reality is that all five squads – namely Colombo, Jaffna, Galle, Kandy, and Dambulla – have been dominated only by SSC and few other elite clubs players. Cricketers from the outstation clubs have been completely ignored in this so called National Super League.
For example, the so called Galle team has not a single cricketer from the city itself! Even Chanaka Ruwansiri and Chalana de Silva, who were adjudged best batsman and best bowler respectively in the recently concluded SLC 50 over Major Club Tournament, were not included in the so called Galle team! Likewise, Dilshan Munaweera and Madawa Warnapura and Angelo Jayasinghe from Negombo CC have been discarded, even after impressive performance in the SLC 50 over Major Club Tournament.
In another joke, 4 out of 5 stand by players in the Colombo squad are from the SSC. To make things more laughable, National selector Pramodaya Wickramasinghe and his evenly clueless colleagues have put Angelo Perera as stand by for Kandy team, even though he has already announced the retirement and has migrated to USA! In another selection scam, Kavindu Nadeeshan (obviously, from the SSC) has been named in Colombo side, even though he didn’t played entire season.
In all, even though it was told that the five NSL teams consists players from all 26 domestic clubs, the truth is that over 60% cricketers are from 4-5 elite clubs. There are 13 players from the SSC, 9 from the Nondescript Cricket Club (NCC) and 8 and 9 from Colts and CCC.
“Well, it’s a complete disaster and a betrayal to other clubs. Ill treatment has been given to outstation clubs and players. Only the names of outstation cities are associated with teams names, but players are from Colombo” a top official of a prominent outstation club told Cricket Age.
The team of Jaffna is another joke, as it consists only one player – Vijayakanth Viyaskanth – from the region, only for the namesake. The truth is that even Viyaskanth has not played a single First Class match as yet.
“To please Jaffna people, they just put Viyaskanth as a standby, who has not played for a premier club. Due to this sort of biased selection process, the majority of clubs are complaining and players are frustrated. In this scenario, no point of clustering clubs” a top official of another prominent club told Cricket Age.
“It gives a bad impression to players that by playing for outstation clubs they will not get any opportunity, as Colombo based selectors prefers only capital city’s cricketers. With this message, outstation clubs will not be able to get players” another prominent club’s top official told Cricket Age.
The NSL will commence with the 50-over competition where the country’s top 100 cricketers will be seen in action distributed amongst the five teams. The squads of 15 players, plus standbys for each of the teams has been picked by the national selection committee, headed by SSC’s Pramodaya Wickramasinghe. The 50-over tournament will be followed by the NSL four-day league tournament.
