Indian Cricketers for Sri Lankan Premier League Has Unusual Names

They are hardly the names one would consider to be representing the Indian contingent as foreign cricketers to be associated with Sri Lanka's Twenty20 League, or the SLPL - the Sri Lankan Premier League.

ravichandran ashwin yusuf pathan in training

While the names of Shahid Afridi, Kieron Pollard, Albie Morkel and Chris Gayle are being peddled around as Sri Lanka attempt their own version of the Indian Premier League, albeit on a smaller level, it would seem, on the face of some of the names released by Sri Lankan agencies, that the real Indian cricketers are missing in the line up.

But it has nothing to do with a BCCI clamp as is being suggested in some quarters. While some suggested that the BCCI would have made a quid pro quo deal with the Sri Lankan cricket board in order to let the Sri Lankan cricketers played until the eleventh hour when they fly off to England for Sri Lanka's tour of England, it would seem that at the outset, Indian cricketers do not have domestic season beginning during the monsoon months, leaving them free to run wild.

However, having said that, the national Indian cricket team has international assignments, the tour of the West Indies followed by India's tour of England. And the SLPL is set to clash against those dates. In that sense, it would seem that some of the names mentioned on the list may have a contractual clash although there is still time for the Indian squad for England to be announced, in which case, some of these cricketers may be forced to forgo their contracts. Whether the Sri Lankan cricket board is amenable to this scenario remains to be seen if these are indeed the cricketers set to make the trip to the Emerald Isles.

Indian cricketers with the SLPL - the Sri Lankan Premier League -

Ravichandran Ashwin, Munaf Patel, Dinesh Karthik, Irfan Pathan, Manish Pandey, Manoj Tiwary, Paul Valthaty, Ravindra Jadeja, Saurabh Tiwary, Umesh Yadav and Vinay Kumar