In a recent development, Sri Lanka’s top cricketers led by Test skipper Dimuth Karunaratne along with several senior players, including Dinesh Chandimal and Angelo Mathews have declined to sign the annual contracts offered by the board, citing that it is far less compared to other countries.

If the dispute is not sorted in due course of time, it could put Sri Lanka’s six white-ball games against India, slated to be played in July, in jeopardy.

A statement from the lawyer representing almost all the leading Sri Lankan players said that the remuneration proposed by SLC is one third compared to some other cricket playing nations, as per Federation of International Cricket Association (FICA) report.

Earlier this week, Sri Lanka Cricket said that 24 of its leading cricketers had been offered contracts under 4 categories and they had been given a deadline until June 3 to sign it.

As far as the contract is concerned – only six players featured in the category A and their annual pay ranges between USD 70,000 to 100,000. Batsman Dhananjaya de Silva earns the most – 100,000 with the rest of them were to receive 70-80,000 US dollars.

The Sri Lankan players said in a joint statement that they were “shocked and dismayed” by SLC’s decision to go public with specific payment details of players.

They feel that public disclosure has also given them a security concern.

“These disclosures amount to a grave security concern to each and every player,” it stated.

The chairman of the Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) of the SLC Aravinda de Silva told reporters that they were forced to make harsh decision based on the past performances of the players.

“We wanted to have a key performance indicators for the players so that we could evaluate them,” De Silva said adding that the new pay scheme was an incentive based contract.

The players, however, refused to take the entire blame for Sri Lanka’s poor performances over the years. They feel administrators and the local structure were also to be held accountable for Sri Lanka’s decline in international rankings.

(With PTI inputs)