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by Chris Dhambarage

St. Peter's College with a star studded line up are confident of producing another good performance when they take on their traditional rivals St. Joseph's College in the 68th annual Saints encounter on Friday and Saturday at the P. Saravanamuttu Stadium.

The Peterites have just concluded a successful season where they recorded three outright victories in the Elephant Lemonade Cup 'A' Division League tournament. They defeated Wesley, President's College and De Mazenod College Kandana in their last outing and have put themselves as one of the strong contenders for the League title.

The Peterites are a formidable combination and they have performed upto expectations throughout the season. The only setback for them was the game against St. Benedict's College where they conceded over three hundred runs to their opponents on their home grounds at Bambalapitiya. In addition they lost on the first innings to St. Anthony's and Prince of Wales College Moratuwa.

Altogether the Peterites have stuck to their task with skipper Jehan Jayasuriya leading from the front. The fourth year coloursman and the Sri Lanka under 17 captain has been scoring heavily throughout the season with over eight hundred runs to his credit. He made a quiet start to the season and somewhat struggled for runs at the beginning being dismissed cheaply on a couple of occasions.

The stylish left hander however picked up his form mid way in the season and then came into his own during the latter stages while collecting runs quite freely. But the highest run getter for St. Peter's this year has been their wicket keeper batsman Gihan de Silva. He has turned out to be a consistent run getter and now he is few runs short of completing the magical one thousand run mark.

The Peterite team is packed with some excellent stroke makers and Ruchira Fernando too has proved himself scoring over 800 runs in the season. The third year coloursman has held the middle order together on several occasions and has a best effort of 139 against Kalutara MV. Vice captain and third year coloursman Denver Faux has been equally good with the bat piling up over five hundred runs including a magnificent knock of 164 against S. Thomas' College Mount Lavinia.

The Peterites also possess a penetrative bowling attack capable of holding their own under different conditions. But their main strike bowler and leading wicket taker is the leg spinner Niroshan Cooray who has 53 scalps to his credit. Newcomer Cooray has done the bulk of the bowling for the Peterites and has best figures of 7 for 69 against St. Sebastian's College Moratuwa.

He will have the support of off spinner Samiddha Gallage who has picked up over 35 wickets in addition to being a useful middle order batsman. The pace attack will be spearheaded by Sri Lanka youth cap Nadhula de S. Wijeratne who toured Pakistan with the Sri Lanka under 19 team recently. The left arm paceman is a potential matchwinner having captured over 35 wickets and capable of running through a batting side in a short period.

The rest of the players in the squad are Sajith Mendis, Dinesh Panditharatne, Prajeev Jansz, Hans Fernando and Shanaka Wickremasekera.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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