Trinity College captain Rahal Amarasinghe was named as the Best Batsman and the Man of the Match at the Kandy’s 104th Battle of Blues encounter which ended on Saturday at Katugastota. St.Anthony’s Colleges Kaveesha Piyumsl was presented the best bowlers award. Rahal Amarasinghe a fine leader led his side this season to win two awards, he must be thankful to his team mates for the wonderful performance in front of their fans. Now they are getting ready for the limited over game which will be played on Saturday at Asgiriya Stadium.
It was unfortunate that this year’s big match was ruined by rain This game is contested for the John Halangoda memorial trophy. The trophy is awarded to the team that manages to win the match by means of an outright win or failing that, a first innings win,So this time the Trophy went to Trinity College who leads the overall tally with 23 wins while St. Anthony’s College has won 11 and 70 drawn.
Trinity’s last outright win came under the captaincy of Niroshan Dickwella in 2012 and the St Anthony’s last win was in 1991 under the captaincy of Umesh de Alwis.
In this year’s game, after Trinity’ s good show in the first innings everyone expected a result but rain ruined. On the first day St Anthony’s College who won the toss and elected to bat first were bowled out for 110 runs in 45.4 overs.
Mohamed Aaqil 12, Thisara Ekanayake 25, Janith Rathnasiri 14, Vibhavith Ehelapola 2 for 20, Theeraka Ranathunga 3 for 34 Trinity College coming into bat started off well by scoring 86 runs for no wickets in 14 oversand by tea at 3.10 pm the game had to be halted due to rain. Then the Trinitians continuing their overnight score were able to score 221 runs before being all out, in the last over before lunch. skipper Rahal Amaraisnghe batted well to score 66 with some good strokes, he faced 49 balls, had nine hits to the ropes and three over it, if he had added eleven more runs he would have reached the 1000 run mark, his knock exhibited all the characteristics of a remarkable performance.
Manula Kularatne 44, Dinusha Pieris 37, Kusal Wijetunga 34, Kaveesha Piyumal 4 for 31, Traven Mathew 3 for 43 excelled. When the game was halted the Antoanins were 38 for 3 in 11.1 overs - Janitha Rathnasiri 17 not out, Manula Kularatne 2 for 21.
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