21 April 2023 10:07 pm Views - 333
104th Hill Country Battle of the Blues
Trinity College were strongly placed after some poor batting by St. Anthony’s College saw them shot out for a low score of 110 in their 104th Hill Country Battle of the Blues encounter which commenced at Katugastota today.
In reply Trinity made a bold reply, reaching 86 for no loss, showing there was nothing wrong with the wicket at Katugastota.
The Antonians won the toss and decided to bat first on a pitch which appeared to help the seamers early on but the batsmen had a field day later on.
They lost regular wickets and never looked settled.
Mohamed Aaqil (12) seemed to settle down after both Kavindu Shehan and Induruwa Galapitage lost their wickets cheaply, but national youth player Theeraka Ranathunga, who bowled beautifully, had Aaqil caught by his skipper Rahal Amarasinghe and this opened the flood gates of wickets for the home team.
Skipper Lahiru Abeysinghe (35) and Thisara Ekanayake (25) are the only two to give a glimmer of hope for the home team but losing wickets at regular intervals, not finding the gaps and compounding dot balls put the pressure on the batsman to go for risky shots and in the end lose their wickets.
For Trinity Ranathunga took three wickets while Vibavith Ehelepola had two with two unwanted run outs seeing the Antonians shot out for a low 110.
Their bowlers were well backed up by their fielders who were top class taking two runouts.
Trinity taking first lease of the wicket showed there was no rocket science in the wicket as they batted beautifully with skipper Amarasinghe (47) and Kusal Wijetunga (32) putting an unbeaten stand of 86 off only 14 overs before heavy rain prevented any play after tea.
35 overs were lost due to the heavy rain and lightning.
Skipper Amarasinghe had six boundaries and two huge sixes, and looked in complete control in his knock.
Meanwhile the Trinitians’ leading scorer this season Wijethunga started off fast but settled for a longer innings in the end hitting six well timed boundaries in his unbeaten knock of 32.By: Shamseer Jaleel