Sri Lanka Under-17 cap Raveen Sayer took a matchbag of 12 wickets to spearhead Trinity College Kandy to a resounding eight wicket victory over St. Aloysius College Galle in their inter school under 19 cricket tournament match which concluded at the Asgiriya Stadium yesterday.
This success had a great amount of significance for the Trinitians as they grabbed the opportunity to register their maiden victory for the current inter school cricket season.
And they were able to perform that task in style with dynamic off spinner Raveen Sayer returning career best figures of seven wickets for 26 runs in the first innings after they had won the toss and elected to field.
Raveen Sayer who earlier completed a highly successful tour of England with the Sri Lanka Under-17 team came into his own during a deadly spell of bowling to skittle out the visitors for a paltry 62 runs on a bowler friendly surface.
In fact the conditions improved drastically on the second day where stroke making was much easier with St. Aloysius College putting up a determined effort to save the match while compiling a modest 148 runs in their second innings.
Opener Udayanga Jayasuriya led the way with a stubborn knock of 43 and also figured in a valuable partnership along with middle order batsman Rashmika Dananjaya who kept one end occupied with a painstaking contribution of 33 runs.
Even then St. Aloysius College were always fighting a losing battle considering the fact that they were trailing by a huge margin of 134 runs on the first innings which certainly made the difference at the end.
Trinity College of course had to work hard for their wickets in the second innings but yet Raveen Sayer was simply outstanding as he left a lasting impression by claiming five wickets for 71 runs.
This time he had enough support from his teammates with spinners Anrith Srimahan and Charith Sudaraka forming quite an effective three prong spin attack while capturing two wickets each.
Trinity College in their first innings went on to hit up a healthy 196 runs with the help of two good half centuries from Arjuna Jayasinghe (73) and Naveen Ekanayake (55) who played the sheet anchor role to put their team on the victory path.
St. Aloysius: 62 (Raveen Sayer 7/26, Charith Sudaraka 2/16) and 148 (Udayanga Jayasuriya 43, Rashmika Dananjaya 33, Raveen Sayer 5/71, Anrith Srimahan 2/19, Charith Sudaraka 2/43)
Trinity: 196 (Arjuna Jayasinghe, 73, Naveen Ekanayake 55, Tharaka Gunawardena 3/64, Ashan Madushanka 2/26) and 15-2
