Sri Lanka Premier League postponed to next year

Colombo: In troubled waters ever since Indian players were denied permission by the BCCI to participate in it, the inaugural edition of the Sri Lanka Premier League has been postponed to August 2012. Sri Lanka will have a domestic Twenty20 league in its place featuring five teams, but that will not involve any foreign players. [caption id=“attachment_38316” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) Secretary Nishantha Ranatunga. Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP Photo”]  [/caption] The decision to postpone the league, which was scheduled to start on 19 July, was taken yesterday at a meeting between Cricket Sri Lanka’s new committee and the league’s organisers, Somerset Entertainment Ventures. A four-week window in August next year has been identified as the best time to host the event, reported ESPNcricinfo. The BCCI had refused No Objection Certificates to 12 Indian players — Praveen Kumar, Munaf Patel, Irfan Pathan, Dinesh Karthik, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Manoj Tiwary, Saurabh Tiwary, Umesh Yadav, Vinay Kumar, Manish Pandey and Paul Valthaty — after it was rumoured that the tournament was organised by a private party which is close to suspended IPL chief Lalit Modi, and based in Singapore. Another major blow to the league was last week’s dissolution of the Sri Lanka Cricket committee that created the tournament by Sri Lanka’s sports ministry. PTI