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On August 31, 2012, Cricket Sri Lanka (CSL) hosted the final of the Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL) at R. Premadasa Stadium, in Colombo.
If asked to discern from the players who batted and bowled in the first Powerplay where the game was being held, most would probably have guessed Pakistan, Australia or New Zealand.
Jacob Oram, Umar Gul and Andrew McDonald shared the six overs for Nagenahira Nagas; Imran Nazir, Ahmed Shehzad and Travis Birt were the batsmen to challenge their mythical semi-divine status for Uva Next. Even when a Sri Lankan took the ball, the focus on people from foreign lands did not cease, for the first four balls of Seekkuge Prasanna’s night were little more than subliminal shots compared to an interview with former Indian cricketer Rohan Gavaskar.
By the time a Sri Lankan bowler was bowling to two countrymen – Sachithra Senanayake to Angelo Mathews and Tillakaratne Sampath – the rain had already arrived.
Asoka de Silva and Ruchira Palliyaguruge prevented the immediate cessation of play, but those umpires were forced to change their minds after one ball. Calling for the covers led to the first prolonged sight in the match that could really be described as unique to Sri Lanka: the sheer size of the ground staff who were tasked with dragging the covers into place.
Five overs were lost from each innings because of that rain delay. When the rain came back, after Uva Next had faced five overs and one ball, they lost the rest of their 9.5 overs. Not that they cared; they were ahead on the Duckworth-Lewis System. For Next’s purposes, the covers could remain in place until the current day.
In a sense, they have. Having already been forced to start their league a year later than planned – in part because of the absence of Indian players once the Board of Control for Cricket in India sensed the presence of Lalit Modi, who had they had come to view as radioactive – CSL were forced to cancel in 2013 and 2014, and eventually revert back to the old domestic format.
Yet the desire for T20 franchise leagues, frustrated on that island, never died away. Their growth continued apace, if not always unabated, elsewhere – hence the decision to try again.
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For example, the Big Bash League and the Bangladesh Premier League, which had themselves only started in 2011-12 and 2012 respectively, were joined by the Caribbean Premier League in 2013.
It is now that league, and the England and Wales Cricket Board’s Vitality Blast, that own the months of August and September in the T20 calendar, an additional complication to the challenges that were found insuperable in 2013 and 2014. And the old ones still exist.
Modi may no longer be a factor, but it doesn’t mean that the BCCI will be willing to grant no-objection certificates to potential players.
Cricket South Africa (CSA) tried to make the same deal last year, and couldn’t, much as they couldn’t get their new T20 Global League off the ground. And while other boards may not be in the desperate position that CSA and CSL are, don’t imagine that they haven’t sought Indian players either. CSL are publicly confident that they will be able to broker a deal with the BCCI, but believe that when you see an Indian player walking onto a ground as part of a Lankan Premier League (LPL) match.
If these factors do scupper the LPL, like its predecessor, it will in one sense be a pity. You will see many worse T20 innings than the one Angelo Mathews played in the SLPL final to give the Nagenahira Nagas a chance, or the one Dilshan Munaweera played to secure it before the rain for Uva Next.
Furthermore, on the international stage, Sri Lanka nearly won the World T20 while hosting the event in 2012, and did win in 2014.
Even more importantly, their players have been integral to T20’s growth. How much, for example, has the format been improved by the widespread imitation of the ‘Dilscoop’?
Sri Lanka’s players deserve better, and their board, for all their faults, is trying to give it to them. The problem is that the sort of rain that forced the abandonment of the SLPL may still be falling.
If it is, no amount of ground staff will be able to help.
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