Cricket coaching clinic at Hasalaka

S.M. Jiffry Abdeen - Kandy Sports Correspondent

A massive cricket coaching program involving six schools and over 100 young cricketers will be conducted by the Sri Lanka Cricket at Hasalaka on Tuesday, May 28 commencing at 8.30 am.

The Chief Minister of the Central Province Sarath Ekanayake will declare open the cricket coaching clinic. This coaching clinic will be headed by the Central Province cricket coach of Sri Lanka cricket Sunil Fernando and will be assisted by Kandy District coaches Suresh Peiris, Amila Pinnaduwa, Nuwara Eliya District coach Migara Ekanayake and Nuwara Eliya district coach S. Karthik.

This coaching clinic will be held at Gamini Dissanayake Model School grounds at Hasalaka which is the last point of Kandy district and is in the border of Mahiyangana.

Hasalaka is an area off the beaten track with hardly any facility to play the game of cricket. Thanks to the efforts Palinda de Silva, Gamini Dissanayake Model School is playing cricket at junior. This is the only school to play cricket in the Uda Dumbara area.

Conducting a cricket clinic of this nature in an area where hardly any cricket is played will give a tremendous boost and the cricket coaches will not only be on a mission to correct the skills of the participants but also to identify talents in the children of the area who are row to cricket.

There will also be around 20 girls attending this cricket coaching clinic. Cricket coach Sunil Fernando is the right person for this mission as it must recalled that it was he who identified the talents of Muthiah Muralitharan and transformed him from a medium pace to an off spinner who kept breaking bowling records at regular intervals to end up wit a haul of 800 test wickets – the highest in test history and no one in the current cricket scene is anywhere near it.