Sri Lanka schools gear up for sixes tournament

The Schools Cricket Sixes conducted by the Old Wesleyites Sports Club is the only one of its kind and undoubtedly has proved to be a popular event in the schools cricket calendar that all schools look forward to, as the curtain-raiser for the start of a new season.

The concept to hold a tournament of this nature for schools came from an Old Wesleyite, Eric Gauder, in the early nineties to bring about comradeship amongst schoolboy cricketers, for apart from meeting each other at regular school fixtures, they hardly continued the friendship thereafter. The whole idea was to get schools involved at one central venue.

It also enabled less-privileged schools to come to Colombo and play with top-ranking city schools, an opportunity most did not have at the time.

With the help of other past Wesley stalwarts like LR 'Lucky' Goonetillake, Ivor Maharoof and Navin de Silva to name a few, the idea got off the ground in 1993 when the first tournament was held at the Wesley College grounds at Campbell Park where 23 schools competed over two days and Royal College ended the first winners.

At that time, and even today, the Schools Cricket Sixes is the only one of its kind for schoolboy cricketers and the tournament caught on very well. Today, there are 36 participants, nine of which are district teams, which proves the popularity of the tournament. The organisers have been wise to get the Sri Lanka Schools Cricket Association (SLSCA), the parent body for schools cricket in the country involved and they are making use of their district coaches to pick teams from the various districts.

The success of the tournament, according to Gauder, is because of the punctuality with which the matches are conducted. "Every year the organising committee has made it a point to work off the matches with clockwork precision. It has been run like a well-oiled machine," said Gauder, who opened batting for Wesley in 1965 and 1966 and is presently an international cricket commentator who runs a sports event management company of his own.

"The tournament has become so popular that schools sometimes phone us to find out the dates before they schedule their inter-school fixtures," Gauder said. "There have been instances where some schools have even changed dates of school fixtures to play in the tournament."

The participants are by invitation and the criteria used is the previous season's performances.

Over the years the tournament has been popularised by live television coverage, which was introduced in the fourth year, and still continues. This has actually been a great boon to the sponsors of the tournament initially Elephant House who sponsored it for the Lemonade trophy for 15 years and since last year replaced by Munchee Glucofit trophy offered by Ceylon Biscuits Ltd. Throughout, the tournament has been restricted to 23 teams and played over two days with the exception of Wesley College's 125th anniversary, when it was played over three days with 36 teams. Since the arrival of the new sponsors, the tournament has expanded to 36 teams and is played over three days. The 2009 tournament will see the introduction of the free-hit for bowling a front-foot no-ball.

The tournament has been graced by a few top national cricketers, like Mahela Jayawardene, who was the first batsman to score a fifty while representing Nalanda College. Sri Lanka cricketer left-arm fast bowler Nuwan Zoysa has the dubious distinction of bowling the most number of wides in the tournament, while playing for Isipathana MV.