Sports Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage has instructed Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) to appoint a new team for the Bangladesh series if players fail to sign their contracts by today.

The move comes in the wake of Sri Lankan cricketers declining to sign contracts for the upcoming year which lapsed yesterday, due to disagreements over several conditions in the contracts.

Player contracts expired on February 28, and all 60 players who were offered new contracts have reportedly refused to sign them before the March 2 deadline prescribed by the board.

The major point of dispute in the new contracts is SLC’s refusal to pay the players 25% of the board’s earnings from ICC events, as well as the move to freeze payment to cricketers taking part in the IPL for as long as he is with his IPL team, and the scrapping of a convention that allowed players’ wives to travel on one tour a year on SLC’s money.

The deadline for signing had been extended until 9am today.

It has been reported that Sri Lanka Cricket has instructed its selectors to not consider any player who is yet to sign a central contract with the board.

This meant that upto 23 of its top players, including Kumar Sangakkara, the former captain, Angelo Mathews, the Test captain, and Dinesh Chandimal, the Twenty20I captain, could miss out on selection for the series against Bangladesh that begins on Friday.

The immediate fall out of the decision was that Sangakkara was ruled out of playing in a three-day practice match that would have signaled his return to competitive cricket after suffering a broken finger in Australia late last year.