Joes complete successful tour of Australia

Chris Dhambarage

The St. Joseph's College first eleven cricket team completed a successful tour of Australia recently where they played a couple of friendly games in Melbourne and in Sydney.

St. Joseph's College played their first game of the tour against a Northern District Cricket Club academy XI organized by Mayor Nick Berman.

Unfortunately it rained in the early hours and the game was shorten to 20 overs per side. The home side managed to score 50 for 7 in trying conditions. Dinal Dhambarage and Shameera Weerasinghe captured two wickets each.

St. Joseph's reached the target in the 14th over and won the game by 8 wickets. Dimuth Karunarathne top scored with 30 (retired).

St. Joseph's College played their second game on tour against the Aus-Lanka Cricket Academy in Cranbourne.

The match was played on a synthetic wicket. This academy is run by former Sri Lankan National cricketers, Ravi Ratnayake and Manjula Munasinghe. The team played a reduced 35 over game with the home side scoring 96 for 9 after having elected to bat St. Joseph's College reached the target in the 18th over for the loss of one wicket.

They had a tour of the Sydney Cricket Ground and it's cricket museum and had the rare opportunity of been inside the Australian dressing room.

Thereafter the Josephian team had a two hour practice session in the SCG indoor cricket nets with access to all 12 lanes of various pace, spin and bounce.

They also paid a visit to Bowral the venue where the great Sir Don Bradman started playing cricket. They visited the oval and the amazing museum dedicated to this great cricketer.

Meanwhile the coach of the champion St. Joseph's College team Harsha de Silva completed the initial part of the Cricket Australia Level 3 Course at the Center Of Excellence (COE) at Queensland Cricket Headquarters.

However he is yet to be accredited as a level 3 coach as he has got to perform a lot of post course work and the participants have been given time till May 2009 to complete the rest of the assignments.