Sri Lanka contract crisis – An addition to cricket’s bitter player vs administration battles

In cricket, there has often been dispute over contracts between players and boards. There was a massive crisis in Cricket Australia between the Board and the players in 2017. In March, Cricket Australia offered large salary increases, particularly for women. However, they broke with the 20-year model of a fixed percentage of revenue from the game going to the cricketers. A deadline was given and after bitter negotiations, a compromise was reached.

The West Indies cricket team was involved in a bitter contract dispute for close to two decades. Now, recently, Sri Lanka are in the midst of a new crisis before their series against Bangladesh. On the eve of the series, Sri Lanka’s leading players refused to sign new contracts they find “unfair and non-transparent” on the eve of their one-day series in Bangladesh. Sri Lanka Cricket offered contracts to 24 players ahead of the team’s departure, with lower base salaries and more performance-based incentives.

Sri Lanka’s contracts process was devised by Tom Moody and Aravinda de Silva. It gave weightage to performance, player fitness, leadership and professionalism. However, one of the allegations was that that the remuneration offered in SLC’s contracts represents figures that are “more than threefold lower” than the sums paid to players of boards that are financially comparable to SLC.

The West Indies era of contract disputes

The Sri Lanka contract crisis is a continuation of player-administration problems. But, they may want to avoid the situation that the West Indies found themselves in at the start of the millennium that destroyed their team.

From the start of the 21^st century, the West Indies Players’ Association tried to formulate a Collective Labour Agreement, a Memorandum of Understanding, a Retainer Contract and a Match/Tour Contract. While agreement was reached on the Collective Labour Agreement and Memorandum of Understanding, the parties could not an reach agreement on the financial terms attaching to the Retainer Contract.

The Retainer is a guaranteed payment to the player for the period of the Retainer contract, typically a year. The payment is designed, among other things, to allow the contracted player to focus on cricket for the full year irrespective of selection for the West Indies team.

In 2009, there was a major fallout between the West Indies players and the Board before the series against Bangladesh. All the key players went on strike and the Windies were forced to field a ‘B’ team. In 2014, there was an even more serious incident involving their tour of India. After the ODI ended in Dharamsala, West Indies players pulled out over the same dispute. It cost the BCCI around USD 60 million and it threatened to disrupt bilateral ties between the BCCI and WICB.

Financial gap in cricket widens

The situation when it comes to money and contracts is far from rosy. Cricket Australia are in the doldrums due to the coronavirus situation. They have had to lay off staff and their finances were only upheld when India toured the country for a full series from November to January. Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are in dire trouble while the situation is not so good when it comes to Pakistan.

South Africa and New Zealand are also struggling to stay afloat. It is only India, and in some ways, England, that is managing to power the game of cricket ahead. The finances at the disposal of these two boards is what is ensuring that cricket takes place. But, the gap between the haves and have-nots has increased considerably in the last couple of years.

It is the financial instability, coupled with the heavy money that IPL offers that is making the situation volatile. Since it is Sri Lanka, the world might not want to gloss over too much. But, the situation can change for the worse in several ways in different countries.