The Sri Lankan government’s decision to impose a new, unprecedented tax system called the runs-tax has been cited as the reason for Thirimanne’s inability to score runs.
The current government of Sri Lanka, in its attempt to promote Indian commodities, decided to tax the Sri Lankan batsmen for the amount of runs they score. This clubbed with the government’s plans to implement the Indo-Sri Lanka Economic Technology Cooperation Agreement is likely to bring cheaper Indian batsmen into the Sri Lankan cricket talent pool.
Cricket Machan has learnt that this new tax is the primary reason behind Thirimanne’s continuous failure. In the ongoing test series against England, the left-hander has only managed 87 runs at the average of 17.40, which is 4.8 less than the average of Rangana Herath.
When our reporters contacted Lahiru Thirimanne for confirmation of this speculation, a dejected Thirimanne stated that “I can’t afford such high taxes. I don’t even play in the IPL and I can’t afford to lose my income in the form of taxes. If you look at my performance in this series, I have faced around 260 balls (262 to be precise). So, it is not that I am struggling. The truth is that I don’t want to score runs and lose my income.”
The percentage of tax accrued from batsmen is said to be directly proportional to the potential of each batsman. Since Lahiru Thirimanne, as endorsed by both Kumar Sangakkara and Aravinda de Silva, has a very high potential, sources close to him say that he might have to pay a tax amount as high as 90% of his match fees.
When we contacted the Minister of Finance, Ravi Karunanayake, he said, “Today, if you get runs on the board, you spend hours in the cricket stadium. Until we improve the cricket infrastructure, we need to discourage further scoring of runs.”
He further stated that it was also an attempt to make the Sri Lankan test bowlers look not too bad. “The second issue is that the number of runs the batsmen score often exposes our bowlers. If we can discourage batsmen from scoring runs, then the bowling would not look that bad compared to our batting.”
Minister John Amaratunga claimed that “Runs are being scored by everyone today irrespective of their batting positions and team needs. The number of batsmen has also increased manifold creating a loss of runs for other batsmen. Many batsmen complain that they are not getting a chance to bat. We cannot restrict scoring runs and therefore we had to tactfully implement a tax scheme for runs so that there would be a lesser demand.”
This is, incidentally, the first time in cricket history that runs are being taxed. However, Cricket Machan has learnt from reliable sources that the government is also planning for more creative taxes like the Candy-Crush-Request-tax and clash-of-clans-tax.
This article is a work of fiction and is meant to be taken in jest.
