Keep a date with your favourite schoolboy cricketer
As anticipated the Most Popular competitions of the Dialog 4G-the Sunday Times Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year 2018 will officially commence from October 1. Beginning there, the competition will run for 26 long weekends, alongside the ongoing Under-19 Schools Cricket Competition season and come to an end by March 2018.
Coupons will be made available for readers to vote for their favourite schoolboy cricketer from October 1, first appearing in the Sunday Times. Coupons will continuously be published for 26 weeks in the English weekend, the Sunday Times, English dailies Daily Mirror, Daily FT, Sinhala dailies Lankadeepa and Ada. In addition Dialog Axiata will open their web portal for supporters to vote for their favourite schoolboy cricketer. As last season, there will be a different method to follow the digital process of voting for the favourite schoolboy cricketer to make him the Most Popular winner.
As usual schoolboy cricketers will come under different categories, mainly All-Island and Emerging. All schools competing in the ongoing Inter-School Division I tournament will be categorised under the All-Island Schools while the remaining schools, competing under Division II and III categories, will come under Emerging Schools. In addition the organisers are expecting to make new strides by introducing more categories in addition to the main two. These will be announced in due course.
– Eligibility, online voting and player registration —
As usual players who have represented their respective school in First XI cricket and with a tally of 400 or above runs or 25 wickets or above in the last season will be automatically eligible for the Dialog 4G-the Sunday Times Most Popular Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year 2018 competition.
With the introduction of the digital voting mechanism the entire interface of the competition is expected to reach another level. However players who wish to enter the fray will have to confirm their participation by registering online with www.dialog.lk/cricket. Even schoolboy cricketers whose names are entered into the competition by readers must register. Players who registered online will be officially scrutinised of their eligibility and entered to the online voting mechanism, while the customary voting through coupons will be still on. The dates for registration and scrutinising methods will be notified soon.
Both coupon votes and online votes will be counted on a weekly basis and the official results will be published every week beginning from Sunday, October 1, on the five newspapers and its websites as well as of Dialog Axiata. The deadline for online voting will be Wednesday noon while for coupons it will be Thursday noon, weekly.
At the same time readers who help the young cricketers reach the helm this season will also be rewarded on a weekly basis. Dialog Axiata will be generous in giving out gifts to four lucky winners among the voters, encouraging our readers to be more attached to the contest as well as the future cricketing talents of Sri Lanka.
– Last season –
The whole of the 26-week-long programme of 2017 had a fitting end with the grand awards ceremony held at the Nelum Pokuna Theatre on July 29, where Nipun Ransika of P. de S. Kularatne MV Ambalangoda emerged the Dialog 4G-the Sunday Times Schoolboy Cricketer and Lasith Croosepulle of Maris Stella College Negombo won the Dialog 4G-the Sunday Times Most Popular Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year.