The fate of Sri Lanka Cricket’s (SLC) Premier Inter-Club Cricket Tournament hangs in the balance as all club representatives are set to meet the health authorities in a decisive meeting at the Sports Medicine Unit in Colombo today.
“We are going through the process which are laid down by the two ministries. We are having a meeting on July 1 and thereafter we would decide whether to go ahead or not,” a high ranking official of the SLC Tournament Committee revealed yesterday.
“The sports medicine team is conducting an awareness session for all the clubs and their officials and basically they would set the guidelines for the resumption of the competition.”
“They are very positive of restarting the tournament and want to ensure that we take certain steps to fulfil the guidelines accordingly,” the source added further.
“We had a session on how to conduct the training and now we are going into the next level on how to conduct the competition and what are the protocols and what are the procedures that we need to follow.”
“The clubs are very keen to start the tournament and they have already commenced practices under the Health Ministry guidelines,” he elaborated.
However, the SLC Tournament Committee has brought some changes to the format for the benefit of the players who are set to take the field after a long break.
“Looking at the players and that they have not played cricket for so many months we thought of going ahead with three-day matches instead of the four-day format,” he stressed.
“If we are allowed to start the tournament by July 14 then we should be able to conclude the league by the first week of August.”
“We have a total of 16 matches in the Super Eight and a further nine matches in the Plate category which could be completed in four weekends.”
“We need to give some rest to the players as well and so, there would be games starting during midweek as well after a break of three days between matches.”
“We got to make sure that the venues are also in good condition and so we have sent our curators for those venues to ensure that the wickets are ready for good First-Class cricket.”
The SLC Tournament Committee have also decided not to go ahead with this year’s annual Under-19 Provincial Tournament which involves mostly schoolboys.
“After the Premier League we will decide on the rest of the season but we are looking at scrapping the Under-19 Inter-Provincial Tournament since the schools did not continue with their scheduled tournaments,” he added.
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