Former Sri Lanka captain Dinesh Chandimal has written to the Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) board and its technical committee seeking clarity and proper direction over his future in the national team and international cricket.

Chandimal was one of the senior players who were not offered a central contract by the SLC technical committee comprising of Aravinda de Silva, Kumar Sangakkara, Muttiah Muralitharan, and Roshan Mahanama. This was after the committee had announced forming a new Sri Lankan team with a focus on youth and fitness keeping the 2023 World Cup in mind.

This meant that the new central contracts saw the wages of senior players like Angelo Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal, and Dimuth Karunaratne being cut drastically and some of them only offered to pay as you play wages especially for players who would just appear in Test cricket, and the majority of Sri Lankan players refused to sign the new contracts.

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However, SLC gave an ultimatum to the players before the upcoming India white-ball series at home, and barring a couple of players, all of them signed on the tour contracts, as SLC withdrew the annual contracts they had offered basically as a punishment for rejecting the contracts in the first place.

This means that the Test-only players like Chandimal, Mathews, and Karunaratne were left without income from the board for the majority of this year.

Dinesh Chandimal, 31, has hence written to the SLC and the technical committee, showcasing his playing statistics across all three formats, and compared his numbers with those of former greats before the age of 30.

Sri Lanka team under the reign of head coach Mickey Arthur has tended not to choose Chandimal in limited-overs cricket owing to his modest strike rate. While his Test numbers are better than most, his last century came in 2018 and since then, Chandimal has averaged 22.43 across 25 innings since.

Excerpts from Chandimal's letter:

"This letter contains facts on my past performance in cricket and performance of other past players. My only intention of stating these facts is to make you understand my position and your organisation's vision of my future.

Based on these statistics, I personally feel I have been grossly vindicated of selection to represent the country I adore in both white ball and test cricket.

Going beyond my player statistics, my compliance towards health and fitness and my ethical standards towards SLC have been of the highest caliber. I have always demonstrated outstanding team player skills. In my career, every decision I have made was always by putting my country and team first sometimes with dire consequences for me personally.

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Since my school days my only dream, intention, and love has been and will continue to be, to play for my country at a professional level. The ad-hoc nature over my selection over the last couple of years have caused me much stress and has subsequently affected my cricket. As a past cricketer, you would understand that selection consistency and selector's trust in players is a must to perform on the field.

"The past greats of Sri Lanka cricket have shown that 2nd half of the career is where greater performances are made. Then why are those very people not seeing the value at this juncture in me?

My conclusion here is that as mentioned before, my age of 31 years is not a factor for performance. My performance statistics and my health statistics indicate I am more than capable of performing at the highest level at the moment.

I sincerely appreciate a response to this letter along with my humble request for a meeting with you along with the current selection committee.

I am certain given the opportunity, I will be able to perform as expected and contribute to Sri Lanka cricket in a positive manner. I would like to discuss my future with Sri Lanka cricket and as this is my profession, at this juncture it is very important for me to make the correct and most informed decisions for my future."

(ESPNCricinfo inputs)