Four top teams vie for U-23 div.1 honours

Chris Dhambarage

CRICKET: The four top teams in the Sri Lanka Cricket organised under 23 division one cricket tournament will be vying for honours for the final berth with the two semifinals scheduled for this weekend.

Colts Cricket Club will take on SSC at the P. Saravanamuttu Stadium and Chilaw Marians SC will be up against the NCC at Havelock Park with both matches commencing today.

All four teams have completed their league matches quite successfully with Colts CC and Chilaw Marians emerging group ‘A’ and group ‘B’ champions respectively. In fact Colts CC certainly have the best record in the tournament out of all teams where they notched up five outright victories from their allotted nine outings.

Colts CC also recorded two first innings victories and the remaining two matches ended in a no decision. Their opponents in the semifinal SSC of course have lost two games on the first innings but have managed to emerge runners up from group ‘B’.

SSC bounced back into reckoning during the latter stages of the tournament where they registered three outright victories in addition to three first innings wins and two no decisions.

The SSC batting will revolve around on promising Kaushal Silva who stroked an unbeaten century in their previous outing against Ragama CC.

However Colts CC do have a penetrative bowling attack spearheaded by M. Pushpakumara and Rajiv Weerasinghe with the batting department led by Harsha Vithana and Dimuth Karunaratne.

Meanwhile NCC are certain to receive stiff opposition from their opponents Chilaw Marians SC who emerged champions from group ‘B’. Chilaw Marians will be fielding a talented side and their key player will be batsman Mahela Udawatte who has been in tremendous form throughout the tournament.

NCC too will be banking on their top order to deliver the goods with Sahan Wijeratne, Tharaka Kottahewa, Sudeera Soysa and Jeromy Saverymuthapulle among the runs. In fact Wijeratne played a major role in their previous outing against Kurunegala YCC scoring twin fifties and will be hoping to produce a repeat performance.