SLC opens cricket ground in a bid to promote out-of-town talent – ​​The Island

The attacking side had defeated their Eliminator opponents, the Kandy Falcons, twice in the league stage and had players like Rahmanullah Gurbaz (one of the star players of the T20 World Cup), New Zealand star Glenn Phillips and three-time LPL winning captain Thisara Perera in their ranks.

The cheapest seats in the Khettarama cost SLR 200 (a little more than the price of a loaf of bread), slightly better seats cost SLR 600 (about what a fancy coffee would cost you), and very good seats cost around SLR 2000 (a fast food burger meal). Pay these prices and not only do you get admission to the evening match, which features Strikers, you could also roll into Galle Marvels vs Jaffna Kings, the top-two teams from the league stage, who played the qualifying match in the afternoon, which would see one of those teams reach the final.

In a healthy tournament, the Khettarama would be packed with 35,000 fans. Sri Lankan social media would be abuzz with debate, commentary and analysis. Potential sponsors would be clambering over each other to be associated.

Kusal Mendis smashed a century off 51 balls but there weren’t many people in the stands to see it ((SLC)

In reality, there were no more than a handful of spectators in attendance, Falcons would continue to play without a sponsor, and while Sri Lankan cricket’s most loyal fans tuned in, there was little evidence that these matches were breaking into the mainstream consciousness. On Saturday, when Kings played Falcons in a second Qualifier that proved to be a nail-biter, attendance figures and interest were only marginally better.

Although the LPL had launched in the depths of a Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, there was clarity in that first season. Perhaps the restrictions imposed by the pandemic worked in its favour. For one thing, the LPL had a captive audience: Lankans were stuck at home with little else to do. There wasn’t much cricket to watch elsewhere on the planet at the time, so fans abroad were also attracted. Playing in a single bio-secure venue was also a bonus: only a single broadcast crew was needed, even if the costs of maintaining the tournament bubble were considerable.

When the Jaffna franchise, known under its original owners as Stallions, won, it felt like a tournament that could grow. Jaffna fans are the strongest audience in the country, for reasons that go far beyond sport. And yet many in the northern city, and some in the diaspora, felt a connection.

By the next edition, the winning Stallions team had been terminated by Sri Lanka Cricket, much to the chagrin of those owners. Since then, there has been no serious attempt to build a fan base in their home cities.

Since then, the LPL has lurched from season to season, with each time it turns a corner with a new edition, new owners, each stranger than the last. Take the Dambulla franchise, for example. In the inaugural tournament, the team was Dambulla Viiking, owned by Sachiin Joshi, who has since become more famous among Indian law enforcement agencies. Next year it was Dambulla Giants, after Joshi divested himself. In 2022 and 2023 it was Dambulla Aura, owned by Aura Lanka, whose website claims the company is involved in everything from spices to helicopters, but which has no products that are widely available for consumption by the Sri Lankan or other markets. In the run-up to this year’s tournament, they were Dambulla Thunders, until one of their owners was arrested just weeks before the tournament. Now it’s Dambulla Sixers, owned by an entirely different entity.

When you see one company after another buying up these franchises and then selling them off just as quickly, while stadiums remain largely empty in a country where cricket is the undisputed most popular sport, you begin to wonder who this tournament is actually for.

Organizers have touted broadcasting numbers year after year. But why is there such a terrible turnover of franchise owners? B-Love Kandy won the tournament last year, and yet those owners are no longer there. The organizers have had to run the franchise.

We say “organisers” instead of Sri Lanka Cricket because, unusually for SLC, they have allowed another entity to run the LPL on their behalf. This is the Innovative Production Group (IPG), which specialises primarily in cricket broadcasting.

SLC and IPG are, of course, facing significant economic headwinds. They operate in a market that is small by South Asian standards: Sri Lanka’s population of 22 million is roughly the size of the city of Mumbai. And while organisers were prepared for the challenges of the Covid era, they could not have foreseen the collapse of Sri Lanka’s economy in late 2021 and 2022. Significantly lower prosperity in the country means fans are reluctant to part with what little disposable income they have left each month, and companies are cautious with marketing budgets.

But even with these allowances and caveats, the LPL struggles. This is largely because of one of SLC’s biggest sins: the board has never attempted to meaningfully expand cricket to the provinces it claims to represent. If you grow up playing in Jaffna, Dambulla or even Kandy, you don’t have a serious local team to represent. You have to come to Colombo to play senior cricket. For most, this would mean leaving their families, getting a job and building a new support network, which in turn means that fans in these cities never really get the chance to get behind local players in the way they might in the Big Bash League, or the Caribbean Premier League, or the Pakistan Super League.

While organisers may be able to point to some growth figures, this is currently a competition far surpassed by others. The concurrent Major League Cricket in the US has attracted the likes of Pat Cummins, Rashid Khan, Nicholas Pooran, Kieron Pollard, Travis Head, Glenn Maxwell and Trent Boult – the kind of star-studded roster the LPL has never assembled in its five seasons.

This is a fair approximation of Sri Lankan men’s cricket at the moment, and SLC officials are reluctant to suggest that it is improving. In reality, Sri Lanka is being left behind by all the others.

(Cricinfo)