Santhush topples Lakshina in home and home battle

As the second week’s results of the Dialog 4G-the Sunday Times Most Popular Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year 2017 contest come out, Santhush Goonathillake of St. Peter’s College Colombo has revved up to take the lead, dislodging his skipper Lakshina Rodrigo from the top of the All-Island Schools category. 

Santhush takes over the lead with a sizable count of 460 votes and is perched ahead of Navindu Nirmal of St. Aloysius’ College Galle with a margin of 320 votes. Nirmal too joins the fray with his initial count of 140 obtained during the week. These two additions at the top push the first week’s leader Lakshina of St. Peter’s into third position. Lakshina received 63 votes in the past week and his tally now moves up to 96. 

Lasith Croospulle of Maris Stella College Negombo loses two places and drops down to fourth as his count reads 55 with 25 additions from last week. Sammu Ashan of Ananda College moves up a place to fifth position. The rest of the list consists of well-known performers from leading cricket-playing schools of the country. 

A similar development took place in the Emerging Schools category with Madawa Fernando of De La Salle College Mutwal joining in with 33 votes. Madawa won the Emerging Schools’ Most Popular Cricketer title last year too. His inclusion pushes back the first week’s leader Raveen Yasas of Devapathiraja College Rathgama to second position. Hirusha Mendis of Siddartha Central Balapitiya is another addition this week with Thisara Dilshan of Jayananda National School Polonnaruwa moving down to fourth place from second. 

The International Schools category too made an early kickoff this season with Shimraz Shahil of Alethea International School joining in as the lone runner. 

How to join the competition 

Coupons will be published in the Sunday Times, the two English dailies, the Daily Mirror and Daily FT, and the two Sinhala dailies, Daily Lankadeepa and Ada. Coupons will run for 26 weeks with the deadline set for the week beginning on 2 July. Readers could vote for their favourite schoolboy cricketer and take them to the winning post during that period. 

In addition, Dialog Axiata have introduced a digital version with an online voting system through an Online Portal to vote for the Most Popular Cricketer (www.dialog.lk/cricket). Players who wish to enter the fray will have to confirm their participation by registering online at www.dialog.lk cricket from 8-31 January. Even schoolboy cricketers whose names are already in the competition, included by reader votes, must register during the month of January. Players who register online will be officially scrutinised over their eligibility and entered to the online voting mechanism from 1 February, while the customary voting through coupons will still be on. Both coupon votes and online votes will be counted on a weekly basis and the official results published every week beginning Sunday in the five newspapers and its websites, as well as that of Dialog Axiata’s Online Portal. The deadline for online voting will be the same as for the coupons.