Former Sri Lanka skipper Angelo Mathews has declined to sign the new tour contract for the forthcoming limited-overs series against India and have opted out of both the ODI and the T20I series after he was offered a tour contract for the India series. He is the only member of the 30-member group to opt out of the contract.
Though the rest of the 29 players have signed the contract for the India series but Sri Lanka Cricket Board’s (SLC) decision to not continue with the annual contracts has put several players in a precarious situation. Test specialists like Dimuth Karunaratne, Suranga Lakmal, Dinesh Chandimal will be without a contract until November when they are due to play their next Test.
Meanwhile, the SLC released a statement where they mentioned that Mathews had requested them to relieve him from the national duties for the India series citing personal reasons.
SLC CEO Ashley de Silva said that this the board’s way of penalising the players who refused to sign the central contracts making several demands over the same. He said that the players will only be offered tour contracts until this year as they had enough time to sign the contracts but they didn’t. There is distress among the Sri Lankan cricketers and it will be interesting to see how they deal with it.
"I don't know how there can be unity in the team while all this is going on," a senior player was quoted by the ESPNcricinfo. "Some players are being blamed for being the first to sign the tour contracts, and others are defending themselves for doing that,” he added.
Meanwhile, it must be noted that the Lankan players had decided to sign the annual contract midway through their tour of England but by the time they returned, SLC had already made their decision to withdraw the central contracts. De Silva said that the central contracts will again be in place from 2022.