Champions Trophy build up from Centre of Excellence in Kandy
Striving for excellence is Sri Lanka Cricket’s (SLC) slogan word, and what better a platform to take off than the Provincial Centre Of Excellence in Kandy. Of course, the immediate goal is the June 1 ICC Champions Trophy, and indeed the big build up in the Sri Lankan camp borders on aiming for that big pot of gold.
That the take off has been ideally from the Provincial Centre of Excellence located in the hill country’s Pallekelle on an auspicious note since last Wednesday is significant. From the pomp of a ceremonial opening in the historic city having paid homage to the sacred relic at the Dalada Maligawa led by SLC President, Thilanga Sumathipala, Secretary, Mohan De Silva and other officials with the Sri Lanka squad participating, soon in was down to brass tacks of preparing for the Champions Trophy. That was after the new location on which SLC is laying emphasis to fine tuning its cricketers was declared open by the Sports Minister, Dayasiri Jayasekara and the SLC President, Thilanga Sumathipala.
Soon after skipper Angelo Mathews, back from a long injury limbo, led his squad of players in to the Centre of Excellence for a one-week long residential training programme up to May 15 in view of the upcoming cricket showpiece in England from June 1 to 18. The full fleet of coaching expertise with the latest addition in Allan Donald, the former champion South African fast bowler as Fast Bowling Coach has certainly added greater impetus to Sri Lanka’s campaign for the big stakes. This is particularly sword edged by Donald’s stated belief soon after taking up his new job with Sri Lanka that the island nation could win the Champions Trophy. In that vein it has given rise to home fan expectancy with Donald stressing that he aimed to fine tune the fast bowling crop to be totally focused on self belief. He has reasoned that player attitude was the key buoying factor to galvanizing a fast bowler to wicket taking success in big time cricket.
SLC’s far sighted vision is the first of four proposed Provincial Centres of Excellence in driving its ambitious National Development Plan in promoting promising latent talent from the grassroots level. Pallekelle is also viewed as an acclimatizing ground to English wintry conditions, and is the second phase of conditioning the team having recently trained in Diyatalawa for the England extravaganza.
By Srian Obeyesekere
-The opinions expressed here are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Sri Lanka Cricket-
