Taking cricket in Sri Lanka to a new dimension, the third edition of the Sri Lankan Premier League Twenty-20 League cricket tournament (LPL), will begin tomorrow (December 06) at the Hambantota Sooriyawawa Stadium. The opening day will begin with a match between Thisara Perera-led Jaffna Kings and Kusal Mendis-led Galie Gladiators, who emerged champions and runners-up on the last two occasions.

Before this match which is scheduled to start at 3.00, the opening ceremony, which symbolizes the official opening of the tournament, will start at 1.30. The Lanka Premier League cricket tournament, which became a reality in 2020, has already occupied a special place in the calendar among the world's major franchise cricket tournaments.

In the first 2 tournaments, only one match was played on the opening day, but it can be considered as a special thing to have 2 matches in this tournament. Accordingly, immediately after the battle between the current champions and runners-up, the match between Angelo Mathews-led Colombo Stars and Wanindu Hasaranga-led Kandy Falcons will be played at at 7.30.

In this tournament, 42 Sri Lankan cricketers and 30 foreign cricketers will compete in 5 groups for a period of three weeks. Dhanushka Gunathilaka, who was among the 18 named for the T20 World Cup held in Australia, and Dushmantha Chameera, who suffered an injury, will not play for the tournament. However, Angelo Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal, Avishka Fernando and Kusal Perera, who were not named in the T20 division, will again enter the T20 field in this tournament.

Meanwhile, Avishka is entering the competition after undergoing surgery due to a leag injury and Kusal due to a shoulder injury. Pakistan has become the country with the largest number of foreign players participating in this year's tournament, out of which 8 players are representing this year's tournament. Apart from that, six players each from West Indies and Afghanistan, five players from England, two players from New Zealand and one player each from Zimbabwe and Netherlands are playing in this time LPL. The Kandy Falcons, however, are yet to name their sixth overseas player.

In the previous tournament, the Dambulla team competed as Dambulla Giants and this time they are entering as Dambulla Aura and Candy Warriors as Candy Falcon.

Out of the foreign players participating in this year's tournament, 8 are the players who represented the last T20 World Cup held in Australia. Naveen Ulhaka, Ramanullah Gurbaz, Najibullah Sadran represented Afghanistan, Sikhander Raza represented Zimbabwe, Paul van Meekeren represented Netherlands, Haider Ali and Mohammad Hasnain represented Pakistan and James Neesham represented New Zealand. Meanwhile, fast bowler Paul Van Meekeren is also the fourth highest wicket-taker in the T20 World Cup. Among the batsmen, Sikandar Raas was the leading all-round player with 219 runs and 10 wickets. In addition, Ramanullah Gurbaz and Najibullah Sadran are the players who showed remarkable performance during the Sri Lanka match tour of the Afghanistan cricket team which ended in Sri Lanka a few days ago.