Joes have a slight edge

St. Joseph’s College Maradana will have a slight edge over traditional rivals St Peter’s College to regain the Rev.Fr Maurice LeGoc trophy when they confront each other in the 84th Battle of the Saints cricket encounter that will take place on March 2 and 3 at the P.Sara Oval.

This battle of the Saints encounter started way back in 1933 with St. Joseph’s College winning the inaugural clash. Robert Fernando led St. Joseph’s College in the first encounter.

The Joes’ last win in the series was achieved in 2008 under the leadership of Ruwantha Fernandopulle.

Of the 83 matches that have been played between the two schools so far Josephians lead the series with 12 wins.

Josephians under the leadership of batting all rounder cum Sri Lanka national under19 player Jehan Daniel has won five matches outright this season against St. Patrick’s College, Jaffna, D.S. Senanayake College, De Mazenod College Kandana, Zahira College Maradana and Ananda College to remain unbeaten.

Their batting has not been all that consistent as only one batsman former Sri Lanka youth player Revan Kelley has been in outstanding form scoring over 1100 runs and being their top scorer for the season with three hundreds. He will have a big burden of steering the batting for the Josephians along with Sri Lanka youth player Nipun Sumanasinghe and Lakshan Gamage who have each scored over 700 runs for the season.

Apart from this trio much will be expected from Johanne de Zilva, Dunith Wellalage and wicket keeper batsmen Sachintha Ravindu who have all scored over 500 runs along with skipper Jehan Daniel who has over 400 runs to his credit.

They are expected to bolster the Joes middle order batting.

To curtail the Peters batting line up the bowling will be in the hands of Ashien Daniel who together with Dunith Wellalage has taken over 135 wickets between them. They will be supported by Lakshan Gamage, Miranga Wickramage, Salinda Seneviratne and Nipun Sumanasinghe.

St.Joseph’s has produced many national cricketers who have gone on to represent the country with distinction - D.S.Jayasundara one of the fastest bowlers in schools in the 1930's, Fairlie Dalpathado, Gerry Gooneratne, Malcolm Francke (who later played Sheffield shield cricket for Quensland), Brian Obeysekara, Ashley de Silva, Chaminda Vaas, Michael Vandort, former Sri Lanka skipper Angelo Mathews, Dimuth Karunaratne, Sadeera Samarawickrema and Roshane Silva to name a few.