If anybody asks somebody to name the top 10 best performing school rugby teams almost everybody will have the name Zahira College in their top 10 list. But is it the same with cricket?
“We are on track” said Zaheer Marzook the chairman of Zahira College cricket committee in an interview with the Sunday Observer at this week’s match between his team and Wesley College at Campbell Park, Borella.
“Needless to explain the fame our College gained through rugby in recent years, we are also in the process of matching it in cricket too. To accomplish this herculean task we have re-strategized our approach towards cricket”, said Zaheer.
“In the past we couldn’t achieve success as we expected. The simple reason was that we didn’t have a separate committee to guide our cricketers, but now that we have realized that there is a whole lot of youngsters who have an unquenchable thirst to excel in cricket and on account of that to spend more time to assist and nurture them, we have formed a five member committee.
“To strengthen our College cricket we have appointed Sanjaya Dissanayake who is a well renowned coach in the school cricketing arena as our head coach and also we have provided our players all the modern cricket equipment to practice with and in addition to those the committee has arranged many friendly matches to give more and more match practice to our players.
“We have planned one or two foreign tours in the near future to offer international exposure to our cricket team “ he explained.
When asked about the team members he said that the current team is captained by Rifath Rilwan and the boys are good enough to turn the tide and make history.
He added that the team is a happy bunch on and off the field while the chemistry between the players is positive and the brotherhood they share among them is phenomenal.
Zaheer declared that very soon the current team will take the school cricketing circle by storm.
They have a wonder kid in Shamaz Mohamed who scored 209 not out against Thurstan to become the first player to score a double century in the current season. Zaheer said that Shamaz is a gifted player who can bat, bowl and keep wickets and is on course to nudging the selectors for a place in the Sri Lanka Under-19 squad.
Overall expectations are high taking Zahira cricket into account as it was the case with rugby. When they started it was not a walk in the park but with the same passion and courage that they have right now they are likely to boom and blossom.