The Sri Lankan cricket board has revealed that the number of teams in the Premier League – the flagship domestic competition in Sri Lanka – is to be reduced to 16
Charlie Austin01-Jun-2001<IMG SRC="/perl/picture.cgi/013319/inline?alt=1" align=top border=1hspace=1 vspace=2 width=150 height=124 alt="Charlie Austin"The Sri Lankan cricket board has revealed that the number of teams in the Premier League – the flagship domestic competition in Sri Lanka – is to be reduced to 16. It's only a reduction of two, but if this is the prelude to a radical restructuring of the first class game then this represents a momentous occasion for Sri Lankan cricket.More noteworthy than the construction of grandiose cricket stadiums and high technology training centers. More important than the controversial employment of foreign batting coaches and far more significant than the fanciful development of fast bouncy pitches in the backyard of Premadasa International Stadium.Sri Lanka is blessed with rich, almost embarrassing, reserves of cricketing talent. Moreover because the game is followed with such enthusiasm, Sri Lankan youngsters develop sound technical skills at an early age. Compare the best eight-year-old in Manchester or Sydney and he will not be able to match the technical prowess of the best eight-year-old in Colombo.Surely, if a combination of natural talent and technical skill were sufficient to ensure international success then Sri Lanka, India or Pakistan would be perched on the top of Wisden's world table. Unfortunately they are not sufficient and Sri Lanka is not riding roughshod over the rest of the cricketing world.The single most important reason for this is, without doubt, the present state of first class cricket in Sri Lanka. It should pit the best players in the land against each other, it should be a finishing school that polishes the technical skills of the young, and it should wed mental substance to natural talent, ensuring that each player has the necessary tools to perform whilst under pressure. It fails miserably in all these departments and by doing so it robs a cricket loving people of their rightful success.In general, the Premier League produces middling cricket played out at an easygoing pace. There is too little at stake and far too many teams. This year, 18 teams and approximately 250 players participated. What is more, the best players in the land don't play – national squad players missed most of the season and others opted instead to play club cricket in Australia rather than Sri Lanka.With the exception of a handful of games in the final stages of the Super Eight competition, the standard is not high enough to test the best players and not high enough to sharpen the skills of the youngsters coming through. The disparity in talent, both within and between teams, is alarming. Moreover the intensity of the games are more akin to the low tempo affairs played out each weekend on the sleepy village greens of England.Small wonder then that the likes of Tillakaratne Dilshan, Indika de Saram, Avishka Gunawardene and Chamara Silva have struggled to bridge the gap between first class and international cricket. Although no one who has seen Dilshan in full flow doubts he that he has the talent to take on the world's best, he lacks the precious experience of playing tough hard cricket and has therefore failed to deliver on the international stage thus far.It's a problem not faced by Australian cricketers, who have been brought up in the harsher environs of grade and shield cricket. Their youngsters experience hard-nosed cricket from an early age and, when the talented ones slip on the baggy green cap, they have a greater chance of early success. There is just simply no comparison between Australian Sheffield Shield cricket and the Sri Lankan Premier League. Even the County Championship in England, a bastion of mediocrity for so long, provides a superior apprenticeship.The Sri Lankan players themselves have long argued that the structure of the domestic competition needs to be changed and members of the Players Association can be heard enthusing about the merits of an eight team competition, in which the best players are pitted against worthy adversaries on a weekly basis – a competition that produces high quality cricket in a high tempo atmosphere.The facilities do matter – especially the pitches, which have deteriorated in recent years – but not as much as the standard of the first game. Moreover, better first class cricket will help provide the necessary facilities by attracting greater sponsorship and possible television revenues. The fact that there is no sponsor for the Premier League speaks volumes for the competition's irrelevance.If Sri Lanka truly wants to regularly re-visit the glories of the 1996 World Cup triumph and if the cricket board is serious about making Sri Lanka the best Test nation in the world, then the standard of first class cricket has to be raised. It's too late for 2003 – success there is dependent upon the meticulous preparations of Dav Whatmore and his growing backroom staff, who have been rebuilding the side now for 2 years, but will still need every one of the next 18-months to go on to transform a talented young team into a consistently competitive unit. If they do succeed then it will be despite not because of the health of domestic cricket in Sri Lanka.Raising the standard – a term coined by the ECB as they tried to persuade the English counties to accept two-division cricket – will not be easy of course. The belief that change is necessary is not uncommon, but so are the low expectations of real change. Administrators of all factions acknowledge the problem – it's just that some are scared of the implications of implementing it.The constitutional structure of the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka provides a formidable impediment to progress. The voting procedures and the electoral system encourage unashamed populism and to gain office one simply must curry favour with the clubs. Restructuring the game, possibly by creating two divisions in the Premier League, would mean overnight relegation for some clubs and only the most brave or foolhardy office bearers would believe that they could propose a reduction of the Premier League to eight sides and still expect to win office the following year.There were structural impediments to change in England too, but eventually change was affected, as the clubs were persuaded that a successful national side ultimately meant more money; enough money to secure their financial security, regardless of whether they were in Division One or Two. The same holds true in Sri Lanka. The value of Sri Lankan cricket is ultimately bound up with the performance of the national side. Quite simply, the more successful Sanath Jayasuriya's team is, the more television companies and sponsors will be willing to cough up.The Interim Committee now has an opportunity, a chance that Sri Lankan cricket needs them to grasp. They have been given a mandate by Sports Minister to affect change and they are not constrained by old board's bogus constitution. They have to persuade others of the urgent need for change. The board's constitution must be refashioned and the Premier League must be transformed.Hiring coaches, buying software, importing Australian clay and building player dormitories will not secure the future health of the Sri Lankan game. Raising the standard of first class cricket will and if, when this caretaker's administration has finally ended, they leave in their wake a competitive domestic game, then they will have contributed something truly significant to Sri Lankan cricket.