Enter 5-team National Cricket League
In an attempt to create a more competitive first-class structure, a proposal has been made to play five-team National Cricket League–a tournament similar to the inter-provincial tournament.
The Sunday Times is in possession of a copy of the draft designed by the cricket technical advisory committee headed by Arvinda de Silva. Under the proposal, the existing 26 clubs are being clustered into the five centres of excellence (CoE) namely Colombo, Galle, Kandy, Dambulla and Jaffna.
Several past cricketers as well as present Test captain Dimuth Karunaratne have repeatedly called for a revamp of the existing first-class structure it does not support excellence. The cricketers who come through the existing system take much longer to adjust to international cricket–the main reason why Sri Lanka recently grabbed an unwanted record being the most defeated ODI team in the world.
The proposal says that the clustering of clubs will be done according to historical performances in previous leagues, geographical placements and infrastructure facilities available.
The top five clubs which are equipped with necessary facilities and have the capacity to host the clustered team and players are expected to be appointed as CoE governing clubs taking into consideration the infrastructure, the period of clubs existence, number of national players produced and accountability and credentials. The clubs clustered to the CoE will remain unchanged for three years.
The league tournament will be a four-day affair where matches will be played on a home and away basis with the leader of the points table declared National Cricket League champions. Interestingly, they have proposed to play all these matches only on international venues. Similarly, they have proposed a 50-over tournament where the matches will be played on a home and away basis while the first and second rank team at the league stage will play in a final to decide the National Cricket League Limited Over champions.
SLC is determined to go ahead with the second edition of the Lanka Premier League (LPL), and the cricket technical advisory committee has not made any proposals for the tournament this year but is planning to come up with a new and financially viable tournament structure for the third edition.
This does not mean, however, that they are doing away with the club tournament which has existed for decades. However, they will make changes to the tournament structure where 26 teams will be divided into four groups with two teams of seven teams each and the other two with six teams as opposed to the two-tier tournament.
The first round will be played on a round-robin basis and the first and second rank team of each group progress to the final round of the tournament while 16 out of the 18 remaining clubs (the bottom two teams will not be eligible to play in the bowl championship) that fail to progress to the finals will play in a knock-out round to determine the bowl winner. While all matches up to the semi-final will be three-day affairs, the final of the championship round will be a four-day encounter to decide the Major Club League champions.
Interestingly, at the end of the third season–2023, in this case–six teams will be demoted to Governor’s Trophy on the standing in the points table in all three seasons. Similarly, a one-day and T20 tournament will be played first on a round-robin basis with the top-seeded club in each group qualifying for the semi-finals. No foreign players are allowed for the Major Club Tournament.
The proposal is yet to get the SLC greenlight.