This year’s Maliyadeva-St.Anne’s big match encounter ended in a draw as the two teams fought a low-scoring battle.
Having won the toss, Maliyadeva skipper Amesh Thennakoon invited his opponents to bat first.
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Right-arm speedster Gayana Weerasinghe was the major wrecker for the St. Anne’s batters as the Maliyadeva bowler bagged 6 wickets with 4 out of the 5 top-order batters falling prey to him.
No batter from St. Anne’s College managed to go past 30 runs in the first innings as they brought out the declaration at 164 runs with 9 wickets down. One thing that kept them from sliding down the pit of defeat is that they batted out a painstaking 83.4 overs.
It was quite a similar performance from the Maliyadeva College batters as they too posted 193 runs for the loss of 9 wickets and declared their first innings. Maliyadeva skipper, Amesh Thennakoon, was the top scorer with 44 runs to his name.
St. Anne’s bowlers did a fine job with Geethika de Silva picking up 4 wickets for 61 runs to post the best figures of the inning.
The rest of the game was a mere formality as there wasn’t enough time left to produce a result.
Still, it did have some spice as the Maliyadeva bowlers managed to topple 8 wickets in the St. Anne’s second innings forcing them to declare at 134 runs with an unrealistic target of 105 runs to get with under 10 overs to go in the game. Eventually, the match ended in a draw.
Brief Scores
St. Anne’s College 164/9d (83.4) Kushan Subasihghe 26, Mahima Kotuwila, Gayana Weerasinghe 6/35 & 134/8d (41.3) Manaan Muzammil 43, Dimath Abeysinghe 5/51
Maliyadeva College 193/9d (55.2) Amesh Thennakoon 44, Ushan Bimsara 36, Jayamin Muthukumarana 33, Geethika De Silva 4/61 & 27/2 (5) Amesh Thennakoon 15, Geethika De Silva 2/18
Match Drawn
