DOMESTIC STRUCTURE NEEDS TO BE REVAMPED: DILSHAN
National skipper, T. M. Dilshan says that Sri Lanka's domestic cricket structure has to be revamped to find new players with potential.
Dilshan said this at Cape Town after his team suffered a 2-1 series loss to South Africa. It was his fourth straight test series defeat since taking the reigns as Sri Lanka skipper in April last year.
"We have to correct our domestic structure. We don't have a strong domestic tournament back at home"
"We're playing 12 to 15 clubs but only five to six clubs are strong. Other clubs are not that strong. That's why it's difficult to find good cricketers" Dilshan said.
As it always happened in the past, Sri Lanka find some brilliant cricketers in the under 19 national squads but they fade away in few years due to the lack of stiff competition in the premier club tournament.
The competitiveness of the premier tournament has been diluted with 20 teams taking part in two segments. Despite being titled as segment 'A' and 'B', both tournaments have been classified by the board as first class due to the fact that most of the criceters seek playing contracts in the minor country teams of England, during the English cricket season every year.
This was totally a political decision, taken by a former interim committee few years ago, to enable players from a leading Colombo Club to obtain contracts in the English minor countries.
This year's premier tournament was postponed for the second time since the clubs demanded for their annual tournament fee. Sri Lanka Cricket, facing a financial crisis at the moment, didn't have enough money to pay for clubs for the tournament to begin and clubs are adamant that they will not play until at-least 30% of the tournament fee is paid.
However, latest informa- tion from Colombo reveals that the tournament is scheduled to begin on January 20.
Fully knowing all these factors, the national skipper expressed his dissatisfaction of the domestic cricket structure
"Our club cricket is not strong as in England, South Africa or Australia. We don't have a strong club structure. We have to get the club structure corrected and then we can find good cricketers" Dilshan said.
"There's huge gap between our under 19 inter school tournament and international cricket. After coming out of under 19 teams, good players don't have a proper tournament to play" Dilshan elaborated on his point.
South Africa beat Sri Lanka by 10 wickets at Newlands, Cape Town, last Friday and Dilshan was much concerned of his team's future with youngsters failing repeatedly. The National selectors had to recall Thilan Samaraweera into the test squad at the elev- enth hour, after being dropped for the series against Pakistan in UAE couple of months ago.
"He didn't bat that well against Australia and in England. Then the selectors thought of giving youngster a chance"
"Then we saw that giving youngster a chance didn't work for us. That's why we called Thilan back into the team" Dilshan said at the post match press conference.
The experi- enced middle order batsman came out with flying colours to score two back to back hundreds in Durban and Cape Town. He ended the series as the top scorer with 339 runs while surprising the 5000 runs mark in his test career.
"I feel Thilan will be an important player for the middle order, with his experience" Dilshan expressed his confidence nn the seasoned batsman.