Trinity emerge triple champions
S M Jiffrey Abdeen - Kandy Sports Correspondent
Trinity College, Kandy, cricketers performed what was thought to be
impossible at one time, when they became triple champions and brought
honour to their home town Kandy at the recently concluded inter-school
cricket season. Kandy though performing reasonably well at school has
not maintained the same standards at club. Though it is the second
largest city in the country with a large following of cricket but at
club they have certainly not delivered the goods having produced two
legendary cricketers like Muthiah Muralitharan and Kumar Sangakkara. It
had just two clubs playing club cricket in the P Sara trophy tournament
– Kandy Cricket Club and Kandy Youths Cricket Club. The former has been
demoted to the lower division while Kandy Youths had managed to keep
themselves afloat for another year.
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Trinity College, Kandy first XI cricket team Picture by S M
Jiffrey Abdeen |
But what is P Sara Trophy cricket tournament and it is really
Division II cricket tournament with the Premier League tournament being
the Division I. But there is no club from Kandy in the Premier League
either Tier A or Tier B. This is the sad state of affairs of club
cricket in Kandy which certainly needs improvement.
Trinity College this year led by that flashing bat Niroshan Dickwella
who uses it like the sabre to slice bowlers have carried everything
before them. In the recently concluded season they scored a record
number of 11 outright victories which no other school from the hill
capital have achieved and may be even in Sri Lanka at the highest level.
They ended the league season with an innings win over their traditional
rivals St Anthony's College which broke a 26-year-old ‘hoodoo'. This was
the icing on their cake of success.
Next came the schools limited over cricket tournament and they won
this too and they made record breaking scores in this tournament.
They scored 352 in 50 overs against St Athony's College, Panadura and
won the match by the huge margin of over 300 runs. Next they scored 384
in 50 overs against Maliyadeva College and they won this too by over 200
runs.
They won the schools knock-out tournament with ease and only one
school from Kandy had won this tournament which was by Dharmaraja
College around ten years ago.
Niroshan Dickwella (captain) |
Janishka Premasinghe |
Akila Jayasundera |
In the twenty20 cricket tournament Trinitians had no difficulty
wrapping up it to complete the triple. Last year too they won this
championship.
This Trinity side is one of the best ever from the hill capital as
they had carried everything before them to bring honour to their home
town. Last year they won the league title and the twenty20 title and
finished runners-up in the limited over tournament. But this year the
lions grabbed everything which was on offer.
The secret of Trinity's success this season was their plenty of depth
in batting and dismissing them for a small score is not that easy. Take
for instance their match against St Joseph's College at the Asgiriya
Stadium. The Josephians batting first made 282 and in the first hour of
the second day, the lions were struggling at 58 for 6 and the follow on
seemed inevitable. But their seventh wicket pair of Dinuk Wickremanayake
150 not out and Akila Jayasundera put on 262 for the seventh wicket to
take the total beyond the 300 run mark.
Skipper Niroshan Dickwella led the way by scoring 1200 runs during
the season in the two-day matches while Dinuk Wickremanayake made over
800 runs, Janishka Premasinghe 750 runs, Akila Jayasundera 700 runs.
Most of the other batsmen passed the 250 runs mark and they got
little change to score as the frontliners were doing the bulk of the
scoring.
Further when the Trinitians had won 8 of the matches by an innings
there is no second turn to bat. In bowling they had plenty of options
but there forte was their spin attack led by deputy skipper and off
spinner Janishka Premasinghe who became only the fourth Trinitian to
capture over 100 wickets during the season. The others being Sachith
Pathirana, Rushan Jaleel, and Akila Jayasundera.
Leg spinner Akila Jayasundera had a haul of over 60 wickets, left arm
spinner Alwin Fernando 67 wickets, left arm spinner Lakshan Jayasinghe
65 wickets. The only pacie to perform well was Amrith Srimahan with 54
wickets. These are all two match records.
This article is not complete if the efforts of their coach Sampath
Perera is not mentioned.
Through dedication and application and the ability to identify talent
and skills, he was able to mould this Trinity side to a fighting unit to
erase records after records. He has taken Trinity College to great
heights by his expertise cricket coaching.
Most of the team members have been at Trinity College from year one
and have been playing at all levels. The principal of Trinity College,
Brigadier Udaya Ariyaratne has supported Trinity's cricket in a big way
and has been their main drive in performing well. |
