Sri Lanka Cricket has unearthed a goldmine with the Board of Control for Cricket in India promising the local board a grand sum of 40 million US$ to sign a contract for a period of ten years under which the country’s top players will be freed to play the Indian Premier League tournament and the Champions League.

Among other incentives are two tours by the Indian cricket team in 2009 and 2010 to play One-day tournaments and the participation of a Sri Lankan team in the Champions League tournament, a Twenty-20 competition, which involves the top cricket playing clubs in the world.

While some reports have suggested the bailout for the Sri Lankan board is worth 40 million US$, others have said it’s actually 70 million US$. In truth, what the Indian board has offered is a 40 million $ deal, four million dollars each year with the board retaining three million and the domestic cricket team that participates in the Champions League getting one million. The other 30 millions dollars is from the two Indian tours to this country next year and the year after and that’s how much a single cricket tour by India is worth.

This has come in as a result of Sri Lanka Cricket chief Arjuna Ranatunga’s open criticism that it was the players who benefit by the two Indian franchises while the boards are at the receiving end as they are forced to free players at the expense of board coffers, during which period the board could arranged some international cricket.

Ranatunga must have won here, but the problem for him now is dealing with the proposed England tour, which looks almost over as the ECB is not flexible for a change of dates.

ICC Chairman David Morgan has scoffed at the idea that SLC is going to cancel the Test series after they were assured of a financial guarantee by the Indian Board, but the former boss of English cricket needs to be reminded of the fact that his own board marginalised the Sri Lankans for years and years without providing them sufficient bi-lateral cricket encounters.

After playing Sri Lanka’s inaugural Test in 1982, the Englishmen then played a Test in Sri Lanka in 1993 and that too a one-off affair and for eight more years, the team didn’t tour Sri Lanka at all. The pattern was of course changed thanks to the Future Tours Programme that ensured constant bi-lateral home and away series.

Even when England hosted Sri Lanka, they awarded the tourists just one-off Tests and the situation only changed in 1998 after the Sri Lankans, led by Ranatunga, handed the hosts an embarrassing defeat at The Oval.

So, given the opportunity, the Lankans would rather take the offer from India than from England as the former had been a traditional ally, who has even helped out during financial crises of the home board.

But the question whether you would sacrifice two Test Matches, one of them being at Lord’s, for lucrative cash is, of course, a moral question. But then, who cares about morals these days?

If all what Mahela Jayawardene wants is to swell his bank account by playing the IPL, then so be it as no one seems to be concerned that the priority should be representing your country. Jayawardene has got the Sports Minster on his side and other prominent politicians too, who have stood with the national captain. But let him not come back to us in future and complain that politicians are having an adverse effect on Sri Lankan cricket. The path he has chosen could make him face serious ramifications in the future.

Jayawardene was recently quoted in a leading newspaper in Briton as saying that more than the money, the Sri Lankan players are bound by the contractual obligations towards their IPL franchises.

In Jayawardene’s case, his obligations are with film star Priety Zinta, who co-owns the Mohali team. But, what about his obligation to 20 million Sri Lankans?

And, don’t they anyway have clauses saying that international cricket should take precedence over all else and wasn’t that exactly the line of thinking of the Australian and West Indian cricketers during the previous edition of the IPL.

On the last two instances Jayawardene played at Lord’s, he made two magnificent hundreds including a back-to-the-wall match-saving one. Of the players outside England, only Dilip Vengsarkar has scored three successive hundreds at the Headquarters and, for Jayawardene, Indian Rupees seem to be more lucrative than another Lord’s hundred.

Others may argue that his opportunity will come in England in 2011, when Sri Lanka is originally scheduled to tour England, but that’s the opportunity he’s willing to skip, to go one beyond Vengsarkar. Four hundreds at Lord’s by a player outside England will be hard to beat.

But who knows? Jayawardene may not get another crack at all at Lord’s. At the rate the IPL monster is growing, Sri Lanka’s scheduled tour to England in three years’ time may be in danger too. If so, which option, you think, would Jayawardene take? Country or cash?

Politicians have fooled the Sri Lankan people for decades. We at least had our cricketers to look up to and be proud of, but the Diases, de Silvas, Ratnayakes, Tisseras and Tennakoons are long gone. Now is the turn of our cricketers to fool our people.