SLC sets July 8 deadline to resolve contracts row ahead of India series: Report

Sri Lanka's tour to England was a disastrous one for the visitors as they lost to the hosts in both formats and will return home winless from the tour.

There has been a long-standing standing contract dispute between Sri Lankan cricketers and the board. Several Sri Lankan cricketers refused to sign a contract with the board due to a pay dispute. The players agreed to play England on tour contract. However, it has been reported that the Sri Lanka cricket board has offered 36 hours to the players for signing the national contract.

Sri Lanka's captain Kusal Perera, front right, walks off the field with his teammates after they were defeated by 8 wickets in the second one day international cricket match by England. (AP)

According to a report by PTI, SLC sources said the players are returning from the UK on Tuesday and they will be served with a July 8 deadline to sign the contracts. Anyone failing to do so would be excluded from selection for the home series against India starting July 13.

Sri Lanka's tour to England was a disastrous one for the visitors as they lost to the hosts in the limited-overs series and will return home winless from the tour.

There was some controversy also as three leading players from the Sri Lankan team were sent back for violating the bio bubble.

Meanwhile, the report also said that desperate selectors have decided to bring back the left-handed batsman Bhanuka Rajapaksa into the team having fined him USD 5000 and handing him a two-year suspended ban for breaching contract terms.

Rajapaksa had been highly critical of the management's fitness requirement regime for players.

Prior to the England tour, the players defied a June 3 deadline to sign the contracts citing lack of transparency in the process.

While defying the deadline, the players said that at all times they were willing to play for the country even if the administration decided not to pay salaries due to them refusing to enter contracts.

At the height of the dispute and negotiations during May, the players said remuneration proposed to players were more than three fold lower than payments made to players of other counties according to information received from the Federation of International Cricket Association (FICA).

Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) had by then announced that 24 of the leading players had been offered contracts under 4 categories and they had been given a deadline until June 3 to sign them.

In the categories released only six players are in the category A and their annual pay ranges between USD 70,000 to 100,000. The batsman, Dhananjaya de Silva draws highest - with the rest of them were to receive USD 70-80,000.

The players then took exception to the decision by the SLC to make public payment details of players.

They claimed that the SLC decision to make public pay details of players had affected their self-confidence and peace of mind.

(with PTI inputs)