Don't Complain About Contracts, Start Winning: Aravinda de Silva to Sri Lanka Players

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Sri Lanka cricketers should start winning matches for the country and stop complaining about central contracts, Aravinda de Silva, former Sri Lanka captain and a key member of the committee that drafted the 'controversial' new payment scheme for players, has said.

"The most important fact is that they should get into the middle and play positive cricket and start winning games for the country rather than complaining," de Silva told Daily News newspaper.

"This positive approach will encourage us to consider offering them more benefits, like some of the other countries in our region. If the team creates value, their incentives will also go up. We discussed this matter in depth before we presented it to the players."

de Silva, who has played 93 Tests and 308 ODIs, said that the players' fee has been hiked.

"Unlike in the past, we have increased the benefits three-fold than what it was but purely on the team's performance…If they win a Test series, we pay them USD 150,000 which was earlier limited to USD 50,000. It has to be a collective effort by the whole team," he said.

"We also introduced a slab for the T20 format, which also runs up to a maximum of USD 50,000, which earlier didn't have any rewards at all."

All 24 cricketers, who had been offered new contracts by Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), have refused to sign it citing "lack of transparency in the manner in which the contract categories have been allocated".

A statement issued on behalf of the cricketers by their attorney recently said that the remunerations being offered by SLC are "more than threefold lower" than the sums paid to players of boards that are financially comparable to SLC.