Third unofficial test postponed for Thursday

by Sa'adi Thawfeeq

Sri Lanka Cricket's interim committee has decided to postpone the third and final unofficial cricket test between Sri Lanka 'A' and West Indies 'A' by two days at the request of the West Indies Cricket Board.

SLC acting CEO Bandula Warnapura said yesterday that the four-day 'test' will start on Thursday (July 7) instead of Tuesday (July 5) at the Saravanamuttu Stadium and that the dates for the five one-day matches has also been changed as a result.

He said that there will be two back-to-back matches on July 13 and 14 and, July 18 and 19 with the third one-day match being played on July 16.

The revised dates and venues are: (July 13): 1st one-day at NCC, (July 14): 2nd one-day at CCC, (July 16): 3rd one-day at Moratuwa, (July 18): 4th one-day at Moratuwa, and (July 19): 5th one-day at NCC.

Warnapura said the changes were made after the WICB requested for time to allow the seven replacement players for the West Indies 'A' team to arrive in Colombo. They are expected to join Daren Ganga's side on July 5.

The seven players are: Tishan Maraj (20-year-old right-hand bat), Lendl Simmons (20-year-old right-hand bat and wicket-keeper) and Richard Kelly (21-year-old fast bowler) all from Trinidad, Darren Sammy (21-year-old fast-bowling all-rounder), Kenroy Peters (21-year-old left-arm medium-pacer) and Jean Paul (19-year-old right-arm fast bowler) all from Leeward Islands, and Sewnarine Chattergoon, a 24-year-old left-hand bat from Guyana.

With the arrival of the West Indies side yesterday, the West Indies 'A' team moved to the Transasia Hotel. The senior West Indies team will occupy Hotel Taj Samudra.

The WICB on Friday picked a 14-member team captained by Shivnarine Chanderpaul to represent West Indies for the tour of Sri Lanka and included eight players from the West Indies 'A' side, which is currently on tour in Sri Lanka ending a long-standing dispute over contracts between the players and the WICB.

The eight are: Xavier Marshall, Ryan Ramdass, Runako Morton, Narsingh Deonarine, Dwayne Smith, Kerry Jeremy, Tino Best and Jermaine Lawson.

These players will join Chanderpaul's team of six players when they arrive from the Caribbean. The players arrived in Colombo yesterday afternoon.

Their opening game will be a 2-day warm up affair on July 8-9 at the NCC.

The three test 'A' series is currently tied at one-all with West Indies having won at Dambulla by 57 runs and Sri Lanka squaring up at the Colts grounds, winning by an innings and 16 runs on Friday.