In what will be a first in Sri Lanka, schoolgirl cricketers will hobnob and rub shoulders in their Sunday best with the country’s elite brand of future stars when they come on stage to pick up their ‘Oscars’ for a showing in the concluded 2018 inter-school season.
Sans gender discrimination they will take their rightful places at this year’s Mobitel-Sunday Observer Most Popular Schoolboy Cricketer Awards ceremony that is into its 40th glorious year, long enough to inspire the show’s organisers and promoters that it is time the girls too come out to showcase their wares. As many as 38 girls schools in the country, including the far flung north, play cricket with every endeavour and passion to match up to the boys and the new concept introduced by the Sunday Observer and Mobitel is expected to bring out more girls who could feel wanted and not wasted for their talents.
With the sport’s custodians, Sri Lanka Cricket, moving forward with a project to promote cricket in girl schools, it is no coincidence that the Sunday Observer and Mobitel have teamed up to reward the best girls in town who until now could have only had fairy-tale dreams.
Girls who have excelled at this year’s tournament representing schools all over the island will be rewarded just like the boys after a panel of experts examine their performances and single them out for laurels and trophies.
One school that is likely to nudge the panel of judges will be Devapathiraja College in the rustic environs of Galle who have won the girls’ title for three years running from 2015 to 2018.
They will easily become perhaps the first school to take cricket to more girls and places in the country than anybody else in the past.