SLC pumps Rs. 125 million annually to encourage three-day school cricket

The Executive Committee of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), under the guidance of President Shammi Silva, has taken a significant step to elevate school cricket by promoting three-day school cricket matches instead of the two-day encounters. As part of this initiative, SLC has pledged financial grants to 56 schools to facilitate their annual big matches as three-day games. Previously, only three schools played their big matches over three days, while all others were limited to two days. However, with this decision, 28 big matches will now be played as three-day encounters, marking a new era for school cricket, starting from the ongoing season.

As an extra day’s cricket would incur additional expenditure to the schools, SLC has pledged financial grants to the 56 schools of Rs. 2.5 million each for the third day of the match.

About 6800 school matches are organized in a year under the three categories of the school cricket tournament, namely the first, second and third tier. Through this, our program is to produce players for the national level. Sri Lanka Cricket and the Sri Lanka Schools Cricket Association have planned to hold the Inter-School Under-19 First and Second Division Cricket Tournaments from the semi-finals to the finals as three-day matches, according to the three-day school cricket format, said Sri Lanka Schools cricket Association President and Vice President of SLC Thilak Wattuhewa.

Sri Lanka Cricket High Performance Centre Manager Ruwan Kalpage said that the three-day cricket format is important in guiding players to the national level. “The skills and attitude a player displays when making decisions and facing challenges are important. This format of matches can identify many of the fundamental things a player needs,” said Kalpage.

Our main focus is to get into the first four of the Under-19 World Cup. Sri Lanka Cricket has supported me in getting the best staff for the Under-19 cricketers where a Head Coach will be appointed soon. Other than that, we have Dilruwan Perera as the Spin Bowling Coach, Omesh Wijesiriwardena as the Fast Bowling Coach, Saman Jayantha as the Batting Coach and Kaushalya Gajasinghe from the coach education unit performing the role as Fielding Coach as well said Kalpage .

Sri Lanka Cricket CEO Ashley de Silva said that most of the schools were not that keen in playing 3-day matches probably due to the fact that they had financial constraints. The initiative was taken by the SLC President Shammi Silva which was supported by the Executive Committee.

They insisted that the school’s Big Matches should be played over three days and if they are not prepared to do that the players would not be considered to represent the country.

 Source:Daily News