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by Chris Dhambarage

Lumbini MV produced a stunning performance to win the New Elephant Lemonade Cup six a side cricket tournament defeating Joseph Vaz College Wennappuwa in the final played at Campbell Park yesterday.

Chasing a victory target of 64 runs the Lumbini MV openers got their act together in style and scored 65 for no loss in 4.1 overs. Danushka Malinga and Dinesh Premaratne made batting look much easier as they smashed the Joseph Vaz bowlers to all corners of the ground to win the final quite convincingly.

Malinga was unbeaten on 44 the highest individual score of the tournament and his runs came in just 16 deliveries. Dinesh Premaratne was not out on 21 having faced just nine balls. Joseph Vaz College electing to bat first after winning the toss raced to 64 for 1 from their five overs. Dilan Fernando launched a tremendous assault on the Lumbini MV bowlers scoring an unbeaten 40 from 18 balls.

He was well supported by Mahesh Rodrigo who was not out on 17 having faced nine deliveries. However Joseph Vaz were restricted to a certain extent during the last over where Maduranga Soysa conceded only 12 runs from his over.

Earlier in the semifinals Joseph Vaz College beat St. Peter's and Lumbini MV had the better of St. Joseph's College. Even then Lumbini's victory was more significant because they made a worse start to their innings losing two wickets in the first two deliveries. But they settled down beautifully from there onwards and kept on piling up the runs to finish with 62 for 4.

Danushka Malinga and Maduranga Soysa led their recovery with a second wicket stand of fifty runs. The former scored an unbeaten 31 from just 17 deliveries and the latter made 17. The Lumbini MV bowlers then got into a good line and length from the start and picked up wckets at regular intervals. Maduranga Soysa followed up his impressive performance with the bat and captured two important wickets in his solitary over. The Peterites eventually folded up 23 runs short of their target despite a late flourish from Sameera Costa.

In the other semifinal Joseph Vaz knocked out the more fancied St. Peter's outfit with another magnificent all round performance. Joseph Vaz batting first rattled up 61 for 3 with good contributions coming from Dilan Fernanado (29) and Shihan Perera (22). The Peterites never looked like making a match of it and completely lost their way losing wickets regularly. They had a tall order in scoring 18 runs from the last over but managed only nine with Dhanuka Randhika hitting a top score of 17.

Lumbini MV also carried away three special awards at the end with Danushka Malinga winning the award for the best batsman and the man of the final award. The Lumbini MV skipper Harsha Cooray was selected as the best bowler for his excellent figures of 3 for 4 in an earlier fixture. The best fielders award went to Joseph Vaz College skipper Mahesh Rodrigo.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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