The longstanding pay dispute between Sri Lankan players and the cricket board took a new twist on Wednesday (July 7) as senior campaigner Angelo Mathews hinted at retirement after not being offered a contract.

The development comes ahead of the white-ball series against India, slated to start on July 13 in Colombo.

Mathews, a veteran of 90 Tests, 218 ODIs and 78 T20Is, and Test skipper Dimuth Karunaratne have been the biggest victims as the duo was excluded from the contracts that were offered on Wednesday morning.

Disappointed by the harsh treatment, Mathews has reportedly written to the SLC administration, citing that he is contemplating retirement. He is likely to make an official announcement of his intentions in a few days.

“What the SLC did on Wednesday was to offer contracts on the basis of each tour,” a SLC source said, as quoted by PTI.

“There will be no annual contracts as the immediate need was to sign players for the series against India,” he further said.

The source also stated that all players who had previously refused to sign contracts did accept them on Wednesday after they were given a July 8 deadline.

Under the new proposed scheme, which is performance-based, 24 players have been offered contracts under four categories. In the categories released by the board, only six players featured in category A and their annual pay ranges between 70,000 to 100,000 US dollars.

Sri Lankan players were concerned about the transparency of the plan and felt that the proposed pay would be much lower than the approved pay scales of the Federation of International Cricket Association (FICA).

The players recently toured England for a white-ball series without signing national contracts.

(With PTI inputs)