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After the fiasco caused by the last moment cancellation of Global T20 League, South Africa's most exciting venture in recent times, the Sri Lankan Cricket Board has to suffer a similar fate. Their prospect of launching a franchise-based Twenty20 league has received a massive setback and hence after a confirmation from a tweet by Russel Arnold, the postponement of the league that caused much excitement in the island nation, has been announced. Arnold was the to-be tournament director of the Lankan Premier League.
Former SLC chief Thilanga Sumathihpala had come up with the idea of the competition and ever since the elections of the SLC held back in May, there was much buzz surrounding the league, especially because of the backing it had received from neighbouring cricketing nation, in form of support from the most influential sporting body in the subcontinent, the BCCI.
While BCCI has a strict policy of forbidding its cricketers from participating in franchise leagues around the world, apparently in a verbal contract they had promised to the SLC the participation of a few players, the likes of Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh and Yusuf Pathan being among the names that had come up.
"We would have loved to make profits, no doubt about that. But it was not going to happen in the first few years for practical reasons. But once we had built up a product, we could market it. More than profit making, through Lankan Premier League what we intended was creating a competitive environment and raise the standards of domestic cricket," a source from SLC told Cricbuzz.
The idea was to create a franchise league, but retain the ownership rights of all the teams while selling only the branding and sponsorship rights. Once the league became financially viable from viewership and investor interest, they would have proceeded to sell the franchise rights as well.
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