Dasun Shanaka plays a shot in this file photo of the last season. The 2020 season which was suspended in March this year will come alive tomorrow to culminate with the planned LPL T20 championship in Sri Lanka later this month :
Club cricket in Sri Lanka is set to return tomorrow with the recommencement of the Premier League championships which was put on hold in March this year due to the coronavirus outbreak.
All the top leading clubs will be in action at venues in the country that will also showcase Sri Lankan players at their respective domestic teams who have not featured in any competition for more than four months despite being engaged in practicing for more than two months.
“It’s a chance to get back not just to play club cricket but to also prepare for upcoming tours,” a Tournament Committee official of Sri Lanka Cricket told the Sunday Observer.
He said chances look good for Bangladesh to reschedule their tour of Sri Lanka for October this year after postponing it from July this year.
The inter-club tournament will commence with the Super Eight matches the first of which will be between Colombo Cricket Club (CCC) and Ragama CC at Katunayake played over three days while Colts meet Saracens at the P Sara Oval, NCC take on Army at the CCC ground and BRC take on Chilaw Marians at the NCC ground in other matches.
The Plate fixtures featuring the second Tier teams will also be worked off with Lankan CC, Negombo CC, SSC, Tamil Union, Moors SC and Badureliya in the fray.
In the first set of the Plate matches Negombo CC will take on Lankan CC at Colts ground while SSC and Tamil Union will meet at Maggona and Moors SC will take on Badureliya CC at Moratuwa.
The domestic matches will also serve as a fore-runner to the Lanka Premier League (LPL) which is expected to get underway in late August that would feature five franchise teams and played at venues in Colombo, Kandy, Hambantota and Dambulla.
According to Sri Lanka Cricket some 50 overseas players have shown interest to sign up for the championship with one of them being New Zealand’s specialist T20 batsman Martin Guptil.
Over 120 players from Sri Lanka that includes currently contracted national team cricketers are also in line for selection to the five teams that will be called Colombo, Galle, Kandy, Jaffna and Dambulla.
The Jaffna team is likely to play their first round matches in Dambulla while the Galle team will have the Mahinda Rajapaksa stadium in Hambantota as their home ground.
The Colombo team will play their matches at the Premadasa Stadium while the Kandy team will play their qualifying round games at the Pallekele International stadium.
Each of the five teams will also have at least one schoolboy player to showcase.