Lanka omit Jayasuriya from contract list, Murali in

“We had discussions over the last few weeks with senior players, Sri Lanka Cricket, selectors and team management to try and put a value on the national contracts. In that regard we decided we will try and reduce the number of national contracted players to 20 from 30. We felt that having that number of players will give us the cream to be signed up on a contract for the national squad,” Sri Lanka’s chairman of selectors Aravinda de Silva said.

“The contracts were worked out on the previous year’s performances and in Sanath’s (Jayasuriya) case, since he had not performed up to expectations, we decided to leave him out. We also allowed him to go to England and play some county cricket to see how he performs. As I’ve said before we haven’t let either Chaminda Vaas or (Muttiah) Muralitharan out of our minds for the World Cup,” de Silva added.

The selectors, meanwhile, retained Muralitharan in the contract even though he had already announced that he will drew curtains to his five-day career after the first Test against India starting Sunday at Galle.

“To be fair by Murali, he mentioned to us that we could leave him out of the contract and consider him only for the one-dayers if we require him, which I have basically from our side told him that we definitely require him for the World Cup,” de Silva said. The SLC, however, included two newcomers — off-spinner Suraj Randiv and batsman Dinesh Chandimal in the contract list and have placed the duo in Category Six.