THE CASH-starved cricket Board of Sri Lanka will benefit immensely benefit from India’s tour of Sri Lanka starting next month. The two Asian giants will lock horns in three Tests and a five-match one-day series. India’s six-week tour to the Island Nation begins on July 23.

India has a vast cricket-crazy television audience and is the commercial superpower of the sport contributing almost 70 per cent of the game’s worldwide revenues. Cricket is India’s biggest passion and an advertiser’s dream market. Any brand that associates itself with cricket is assured of good returns. Less affluent countries like Sri Lanka are not ashamed to cash in on India’s financial muscle.

Earlier, when Sri Lanka won the World Cup in 1996, the Board was never short of sponsors. But in recent years, the income has dwindled. The Sri Lankan Board earns a major portion of its revenue by the sale of television rights to home internationals. It lost $11 million when South Africa pulled out of a triangular one-day series in August, 2006 after a bomb blast near the team hotel in Colombo.

The Sri Lanka Board has paid off India’s Rs 600 cr bank overdraft after getting an advance payment from television rights sold for the Indian tour. Dubai-based Ten Sports, which holds the television rights for the tour, has already paid 50 per cent of the $ 15.2 million agreed for the tour.