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Sri Lanka Cricket pad up for Youth World Cup
By Marlon Fernandopulle
Sri Lanka is poised to be awarded the honour of hosting the under 19 youth World cup early next year. A high ranking official of the International Cricket Council (ICC) will arrive in the island tomorrow to view detailed plans of the event which have been prepared by Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC).

ICC's event co-ordinating manager Warren Deutrom who is overlooking the event will have discussions with Interim Committee officials and SLC's Director Cricket Operations Bandula Warnapura tomorrow before a final decision on the Youth World Cup is taken. Warnapura, The Sunday Times learns has been given the task of making all preparations for the event.

A total of sixteen countries will compete at next years Youth World Cup which will be played over 22 days and will have 44 games. Sri Lanka hopes to schedule all the games in four venues in Colombo. The last time Sri Lanka hosted the Youth World Cup was in the year 2000. Sri Lanka was led by Malintha Gajanayake on that occasion and finished as runners-up to India.

Meanwhile Sri Lanka Cricket is set to renew their team sponsorship with Dilmah Tea later this month. An official of SLC confirmed that Dilmah Tea has secured the rights of the team sponsor for a further three and a half years. "The bid submitted by Dilmah is being evaluated by our auditors right now. We expected a report from the auditors this week after which we will be holding talks with officials of Dilmah in a bid to finalize the deal". SLC expects to sign the team sponsorship later this month.

Although several other companies, including Hero Honda, LG and Kia, had formally expressed a desire to bid for the team sponsorship rights, Dilmah were the only company to table a bid by the official deadline last week.

According to the SLC official Dilmah has discounted the value of the two ICC Champions trophy tournaments and the ICC World Cup which are scheduled during this period, in their final bid. However SLC is expected to talk to the ICC in a bid to include the country's team sponsor and have branding rights in the two ICC champions trophy tournaments and the World Cup as it will help to increase the value of the team sponsor.

Dilmah's bid this year is believed to be less than their 2001 bid of $3.1 million which included the branding rights for the ICC World Cup in South Africa (2003) and two ICC Champions Trophy tournaments in 2001 and 2004.

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