Five Srilankan cricketers, namely Lasith Embuldeniya, Vishwa Fernando, Lahiru Kumara, Ashen Bandara, and Kasun Rajitha, were offered tour contracts by the Srilankan Cricket board for the India series but they all refused to sign it.
Srilankan Cricket CEO Ashley de Silva said,
“Until the national contract issue is resolved they were asked to sign the tour contract if they are going to be available for the Indian series so that they can go into a bubble as we are investing in them. But they were reluctant to sign the tour contract and therefore they were left out of the residential camps. They did not join the bubble in Dambulla or Colombo.”
“These five were offered a tour contract. That is when you participate, they will also be considered for national selection for the Indian tour. For the Indian tour, you need to have a tour contract, which they didn’t sign as they are part of the 24 players offered national contracts. If they sign the tour agreement before the commencement of training for the Indian tour the selectors will consider them,” he added.
Srilankan cricket is going through a very rough phase be it on the field or off the field. Earlier this week, three Srilankan players – Kusal Mendis, Gunathilaka, and Niroshan Dickwella were sent home from the tour of England. They were found guilty of breaking bio-bubble protocol.
Currently, the core group of Srilankan players is in England, where they are playing a limited-overs series. The hosts whitewashed Srilankans in the 3 matches T20I series and now leading the ODI series by 2-0.
India will play a limited-overs series against Srilanka starting from 13th July. The Men In Blue are scheduled to play three ODIs and as manyT20Is. Since the main squad is in England for the test series, BCCI has sent a young side on this tour. The side led by Shikhar Dhawan and Rahul Dravid will be the head coach on this tour.
India’s squad for the limited-overs series against Sri Lanka
Shikhar Dhawan (Captain), Prithvi Shaw, Devdutt Padikkal, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Suryakumar Yadav, Manish Pandey, Hardik Pandya, Nitish Rana, Ishan Kishan (Wicket-keeper), Sanju Samson (Wicket-keeper), Yuzvendra Chahal, Rahul Chahar, K Gowtham, Krunal Pandya, Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy, Bhuvneshwar Kumar (Vice-captain), Deepak Chahar, Navdeep Saini, Chetan Sakariya