Murali off the hook thanks to contract flaw

A flaw in the Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) player contract has allowed Muttiah Muralitharan to go scot free from being handed out a stern punishment. When the SLC Executive Committee met on Tuesday to take up the issue of whether Muralitharan had flouted his contract by speaking to the media without prior permission, they ran into a snag.

It was discovered that the player's contract did not specifically mention any course of action or warning to the player if he violated its clause. What it said was that a player should first obtain permission from SLC before expressing his views to the media. In this regard SLC were helpless to initiate any course of action against Muralitharan.

"We got a lawyer to go through the contract before we took any action. The contract was very vague. So we decided against taking any course of action," said SLC president Mohan de Silva. De Silva said that SLC would caution Muralitharan and remind him to comply with his commitments with SLC in the future. De Silva said that the necessary amendments would be made to the contracts when they come up for renewal in February next year.

Muralitharan is one of ten players contracted with SLC on a yearly basis. He got himself into troubled waters when he aired his views on the International Cricket Council (ICC) cricket committee's recommended increase of tolerance level to an Australian radio station. The ICC committee decided to raise the level to 15 degrees for all bowlers which automatically allowed Muralitharan to bowl his currently banned 'doosra' delivery.

The station quoted Muralitharan of accusing Australian fast bowlers Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie as 'chuckers', an allegation which the Sri Lankan spinner has denied saying his comments had been misinterpreted.

This statement the SLC accepted after Muralitharan had written to them explaining his side of the story. Muralitharan with 532 Test wickets is chasing Shane Warne's world record of 549 wickets. He is currently in Melbourne with his surgeon Dr David Young who will decide when he can turn his bowling arm over after it had undergone an operation to remove a cyst which was causing him a lot of pain. Muralitharan has been out of cricket since pulling out of the second Test against South Africa at the SSC on August 11. He is hopeful that he can make a come back to international by January next year in time for the second Test against New Zealand. But everything depends on the outcome of his meeting with Dr Young.