SLC’s contract muddle: too many cooks spoiling the broth

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

The recent saga of the contract dispute between the players and the Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) administration has stirred conflicting emotions among cricket fans and the public at large. To an ordinary citizen who does not understand or is privy to the finer details encompassing this impasse, it may appear as the cricketers were holding the SLC administration to ransom with little regard for the country. In all honesty, one cannot be faulted for having such sentiments.

But in reality, the reasons are much more sensitive and starker. To begin with, the annual contracts are a straightforward process involving the Ex-Co (SLC Executive Committee) and the national cricket selection committee. The Ex-Co decides how many cricketers they wish to offer annual contracts to, and upon this information being conveyed to the selectors, they determine the cricketers worthy of being offered contracts and categorises them based on their net worth to the team and country. The selection criteria is based purely on skills and past performances.

What has transpired this time around is that the high-powered Technical and Advisory Committee and newly appointed Director of Cricket Tom Moody have taken over the process and issued guidelines with a points matrix – one which has been contested by the cricketers. In all fairness, this is a classic case of too many cooks spoiling the broth, or in this case, meddling in areas in which they have no jurisdiction. 

Sadly, every decision taken by this committee of past cricketers have been subject to severe public criticism and the hidden intention is probably to save the money that is being liberally doled out to Tom Moody – which is another matter altogether. It should also be pointed out that Roshan Mahanama, Mahela Jayawardene and Pramodya Wickramasinghe were strong advocates of “player rights” when they served on the Ex-Co of the Players’ Association. These gentlemen, who are now holding key positions in administration and not standing up for the players, smack of hypocrisy with only a paltry 7% of the budgeted earnings being disbursed to the cricketers.

It is also unfortunate that the SLC Management Committee (that was in place at the time) and/or the Technical and Advisory Committee chose to disclose all sensitive details in the public domain, perhaps with the sinister motive of applying pressure on the players. There are certain unwritten principles where you never ask a man his salary and a woman her age. These simple moral values have been violated by SLC Management Committee and/or the Technical and Advisory Committee and it is only fair that in the same spirit of disclosure adopted on cricketer wages, they also disclose details of the following:

• Annual salaries paid to coaches and support staff
• Annual SLC staff salaries
• Annual consultancy fees
• Annual legal fees
• Annual donations (including to religious institutions)
• Annual payments disbursed to clubs (all levels)
• Annual per-diems paid to SLC office-bearers
• Annual payments to schools

The amount being paid to Tom Moody is public knowledge now, and the disclosure of these details will show how justifiable it is to subject the cricketers to a 40% pay cut.

In all fairness, the players have remained united in the face of extreme pressure being applied and have shown their resolve in no uncertain terms. Kudos to them for having done so, and now it is up to the newly appointed Ex-Co to show uniformity and apply the same salary cuts across the board and to all cricket-related payments and handouts to all and sundry if they are to justify the pay cuts being directed based on ‘performance’. In all fairness, it is grossly unfair to pin the blame of poor performance on the players and players alone when they have simply not been provided with an environment conducive for performance.

The 24-member team left for England not in the proper frame of mind to play cricket after a hotly contested dispute with the SLC authorities, and reportedly with Tom Moody and the Head Coach Mickey Arthur as well, over the contract issue.

Is this the environment that the cricket authorities are providing our players to play under against a top ranked one-day team like England, who are also the present World Cup champions?

Head of the Cricket Advisory and Technical Committee Aravinda de Silva went on record stating that the cricketers should start winning rather than complaining. The players’ contract dispute would not have been dragged this far had the Cricket Advisory and Technical Committee or the SLC Management Committee given the cricketers the system adopted to award points for each player on the new performance-based model. That was the bone of contention in this whole episode, not money or the refusal to play for the country, which some have sadly interpreted quite wrongly.      

The Minister of Sports too was seen wading into the melee suggesting that the players should always put #countryfirst. The Minister should most certainly advocate the same rules to the administrators of sports associations as well. In the absence of there being uniformity and a level playing field, there can never be an environment of merit and trust that will garner success.