Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) yesterday took a bold step to ban all player agents. SLC’s decision will put an end to the manipulation and maneuvering by player agents, some of whom looked to have hijacked country’s cricket administration running things the way they wanted.
Although there are three prominent player agents in the country, Englishman Charlie Austin living in Colombo enjoyed enormous powers as he managed all Sri Lanka’s leading cricketers including Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Lasith Malinga, Angelo Mathews, Upul Tharanga and Dinesh Chandimal.
With yesterday’s SLC announcement Austin’s empire came tumbling down.
“As far as the board is concerned, we will not recognize player agents,” SLC Secretary Nishantha Ranatunga told journalists yesterday.
“If you look at the past, the board used to correspond and communicate with player agents. We felt that at that time it will support players to concentrate on the game and the others (agents) to do the work. But looking at all the things that have happened in the past, the board took a decision that we will not recognize them hereafter. There could be more negatives than positives due to player agents. This has been our experience,” Ranatunga added.
While player agents earn ten to 30 percent as commissions from commercials players appear in and other endorsements, a recent trend saw agents even getting a commission from national contracts of players. But the worse was when agents manipulated sensitive cricket issues harming the interests of the Sri Lankan cricket.
The role one player agent played to cancel Sri Lanka’s proposed tour of England in 2009 so that cricketers can play the full IPL was a rude wake up call on the detrimental effects of the cancer called player agents.
In 2008, SLC was also forced to double match fees for national cricketers as one agent carried out a ruthless campaign to show that payments received by Sri Lanka’s cricketers wasn’t on par with what those in other parts of the world received. That was one of the reasons for SLC’s current financial crisis.
“We have told the players that our duty is not to look after 25 players. Our responsibility is to look after junior cricket, clubs cricketers and we should keep in mind that there are so many others who have helped develop cricket to this level. Yet they aren’t earning a cent. We told the captain and the vice-captain that the contracts that we give, if players don’t sign within ten days they will not be included in the national squad,” Ranatunga further said.
Article courtesy – The Island
