MCA academy enters seventh year

The MCA Cricket Academy will be celebrating their 06th anniversary on 01st of June 2008. A brain child of former MCA President, Chris Obeyesekere, the MCA Cricket Academy was inaugurated during his tenure in 2002, at it’s indoor nets facility with just 03 students.

After six years in existance, it has 125 students from the ages of 07 to 17 years. The academy comes under the purview of the MCA Development Committee, headed by a Vice President and Directors, Basil Perera and Jerry Woutersz. The Head Coach is Sarath Perera and the Asst. Coach is Namal Seneviratne.

Coaching classes are conducted at the MCA indoor nets facility every Saturday (02 sessions ), Sunday (02 sessions) and Monday (01 session) and is strictly confined to 25 students per session. The academy is not just a school teaching the basics of cricket, but with a vast curriculum aiming to make every student a complete cricketer and a model citizen of the country.

Periodically, the academy conducts workshops to it’s students and the most recent one held featured, Mahela Jayawardena, Marvan Atapattu, Kumar Sangakkara, Kumar Dharmasena, Roshan Mahanama, Gamini Silva (on umpiring), Dr. Nilhaan Samaranayake (on nutrition) and A. Frankie (on scoring).

The students also get the opportunity of taking part in tournaments organized by other Cricket Academies and coaching schools. The MCA academy too annually conducts an invitational tournament to other academies and coaching schools for Under 13 and Under 15 categories.

Their third invitational tournament is scheduled to be held during the August school holidays for only Under 13 ‘s with 16 teams participating.