Look after your Test cricketers

by Rex Clementine

Less than 24 hours after Suranga Lakmal announced his international retirement, English county Derbyshire declared a two year deal with the fast bowler. Lakmal has been the leader of the Test attack for a considerable period of time and the county’s younger players will enjoy his presence. Their coach Mickey Arthur surely knows what this man with a great character can offer Derbyshire.

Ideally, Sri Lanka would have wanted Lakmal to see through the current cycle of the ICC Test Championship. There were efforts to convince him to stay on at least till the home Tests against Australia, but Lakmal has put financial security over national commitment. Not many would fault him for he has a family to look after.

Lakmal’s annual SLC’s retainer was USD 80,000 in 2020. But the following year, it was cut to US$ 24,000. Well, all of it was not administrator’s fault. He had been offered something in the range of US$ 55,000 but with seniors up in arms, he too chose not to sign contracts. The authorities maintained status quo and after seven months of deadlock, eventually the seniors agreed to sign contracts. They were paid only for the remaining five months which was US$ 24,000.

This year’s contracts are not yet to be announced. Lakmal may have got something in the range of US$ 65,000. However, there’s no seniority payment or so that was scrapped last year. Lakmal eventually chose County Cricket over Test cricket.

The Cricket Committee that drew up the contracts has some of the finest brains in the game. They have argued that the seniors needed a wake up call. They have also added that with the national cricket team ranked so low, the players have little bargaining power. It is also true that the players have not covered themselves in glory in the last couple of years.

But, the other side of the coin is that some of these legends in the Cricket Committee fought for the pound of flesh when they were players. Well, when they threatened the board, Kumar Sangakkara was world’s number one ranked batsman while Muttiah Muralitharan was world’s number one ranked bowler. So they were within their rights you may say. However, they did go overboard on certain instances. Like when they used underarm tactics to scrap a tour of England to play the full IPL.

That’s all beside the point. The burning issue here is that we need to protect our Test cricketers. This year’s annual contracts are yet to be announced. If they are not attractive for those who play Test match cricket only, we are set to lose more players. It will be a shame that if we lose someone like Dimuth Karunaratne who was world’s third highest run getter last year. Then there is Angelo Mathews closing in on 100 Test matches. They have certainly got much more to offer and it should be a fair playing field for everyone.