Sri Lanka Cricket’s attempt to revive the troubled Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL) with a new model for this year has crashed landed for the second year running with little interest from its promotions partner Somerset Entertainment Ventures (SEV)
With all hopes shattered in reviving the domestic tournament with international favour, SLC has focused itself on getting the ‘Super Fours’ tournament, a domestics T20 league with no international players, to select the team for the Champions League.
“Since terminating the contracts of seven franchise owners for not paying the tournament fees and the bank guarantee for player payments, we have tried to revive the tournament, but there has been no response from the promotions partner,” said Ajith Jayasekera, Director SLPL.
“Beside there’s no window left due to South Africa’s visit in July and Sri Lanka A team’s tour of England later that month,” Jayasekera said.
However, South Africa’s tour of Sri Lanka was hastily arranged after two boards agreed to bring a revised Test series down to 2014 thus Jayasekera’s reasoning was quite unacceptable. Sri Lanka were to host South Africa in a full series in 2013 but the Test series was shifted to 2015 in order to make a window for the SLPL.
The tournament got off to an inauspicious start in 2012 with Indian cricket authorities refusing to release their players citing that the tournament was organized by a private party on behalf of SLC.
However, SLC went ahead with the inaugural edition with many suggesting that the tournament was doomed to fail without India’s participation.
“We are in the process of organizing the ‘Super Fours’ on a grand scale this year. Obviously there will not be any foreign players, but we will have all local stars, the national team, the A team players in action,” Jayasekera said.
Jayasekera added that the inaugural edition fetched them a profit of US$ 2.2 million which led SLC Executive Committee to appoint him as the director of the tournament.
Jayasekera, a former top ranked Air Force officer, has faced criticism for holding onto a redundant post for a six figure salary with many other perks since his appointment last year.
“As I said, I was appointed by the Executive Committee of SLC and the contract will end next month,” Jayasekera said.
