Pca Hits Out At Sri Lanka Tour Plans

The Professional Cricketers’ Association has hit out at plans to downgrade Sri Lanka’s tour of England next summer with many of the top players taking in the Indian Premier League.

Last week Sri Lankan sports minister Gamini Lokuge ruled that 13 leading players, including Kumar Sangakkara and Muttiah Muralitharan, would stand down from the tour to fulfil Indian Premier League commitments.
Sean Morris, the Professional Cricketers’ Association chief executive, believes that the move will threaten players’ existing contracts with their countries.

‘The guys who control the purse strings are now showing that they have the potential to make or break a Test series in another country. England are on the outside at the moment, and the Indian board have simply decided to devalue this series for their own ends.

‘It’s not long since the Indians, and everybody else, sat down at an International Cricket Council meeting and promised to protect Test cricket. Now they’re threatening other countries’ Test contracts.’

Lokuge’s stance leaves the England and Wales Cricket Board with two choices – either cancel the Tests or take on Sri Lanka’s second XI.

At the heart of the affair is the $70m cheque being offered by the Indians in exchange for Sri Lanka’s annual participation in the Champions League plus a couple of one-day series between now and 2010. 

Added Morris: ‘Next year is the busiest year ever. The players don’t want to be turning up for games that aren’t the best against the best.

‘This situation needs to be managed very carefully because devalued series are damaging for everybody – players, boards, broadcasters, spectators, you name it. You can start to see Test series being relegated to the second tier of importance and getting blown out of the water by domestic tournaments.

‘We’ve argued for a long time that the IPL need a window in the schedule to prevent this sort of thing happening. The whole Future Tours Programme has to be overhauled.’

Representatives of the ICC’s 10 full member countries are in Dubai today to discuss the scenario amongst other items on the agenda.