The press conference for the U19 Super Provincial 50 Over Tournament 2019 was held today at the SLC headquarters with the junior selection committee chaired by Ranjith Madurusinghe, U19 head coach Hashan Tillakaratne and four captains of the Super-Provincial teams.
Photos: Media Briefing of the U19 Super Provincial 50 Over Tournament
The tournament will be played from 16th July to 23rd July in Kandy and Dambulla.
The squads consisting of 15 players and 5 standbys each, have already been announced and those 60 schoolboy cricketers will gain the much-needed exposure to put themselves in the spotlight for the U19 World Cup next January and for the upcoming U19 Asia Cup which will be held in Sri Lanka.
Head of Operations, Domestic Cricket, Chinthaka Edirimanne said, “The tournament will be played under regular ICC rules and players will experience the facilities which the national level players are provided with. Best performers of the tournament will be awarded with trophies as well”
It is compulsory to add three U17 players in each squad while players who were born after September 1st, 2000 are eligible for the tournament.
“Taking the school performers into consideration, we picked players for each district. Our initial plan was to pick the best players from the district tournament and go into play a provincial tournament. Afterwards we wanted to play a super provincial tournament. But we could not go through the provincial tournament because of the time factor”, Sri Lanka U19 head coach, Hashan Tillakaratne explained the reason for ditching the 9-team provincial tournament.
He further added, “we will also have similar district and provincial tournament lined up for our U15 and U17 schoolboys. It must be added that SLC has already planned to have U15 and U17 national squads. When it comes to junior levels, we will be more concerned on their technical aspect of the game, mental-physical fitness and lifestyle education.”
Selected games will be shown live on Dialog TV 77, ThePapare.com and MyTV. Stay with ThePapare.com for comprehensive coverage of this tournament.
