Samantha Dodanwela led tournament committee has made many significant changes for the recently started domestic cricket season, Cricket Age exclusively learns.
Dodanwela, an Executive Committee (ExCo) member at Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) and also Lanka Premier League (LPL) director, represents Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC). According to sources, few weeks ago a meeting was called at SSC to discuss continuous below per performance of the club. In last few years, SSC standard has gone down significantly, despite hijacking all the star players from the other clubs. Cricket Age understands that during the meeting, which was attended by SSC Cricket Committee Chairman Mahela Jayawardene as well, strategies and options were discussed to bring back club’s team on winning path.
A few days later, Dodenwela led committee changed tournament rules!!
As per the Tournament committee’s circular, which is in Cricket Age possession, a club can register two overseas players but only one will be allowed to play in the match. Earlier, two overseas players were allowed to be Included in the playing XI. In another significant change, now those clubs who don’t have their own grounds, can’t hire International venues for the home matches.
Notably, the ‘overseas players, rule benefits outstation teams most, as majority of star domestic and International players prefers to associate with Colombo based clubs. Especially, as since last few seasons SSC has unethically snatched almost every prominent domestic and international player! In this scenario, outstation teams brings overseas players to strengthen their playing XI. However, now with changed rule, the outstation teams are bound to weaken more!
Not allowing International venues also bound to impact outstation teams badly. Even big clubs Ragama CC, Chilaw Marians don’t have their own grounds. And with this new rule, now even prestigious Galle Cricket Club won’t be able to use Galle Cricket Stadium as it’s home ground. In this scenario, all these teams will have to play their home matches in substandard grounds, which will ultimately make country’s domestic cricket even less competitive, boring, one dimensional and will provide Colombo based clubs like SSC an unfair advantage!
