No change at the top at the end of count nine
The chart-topper, Navindu Nirmal of St. Aloysius’ College Galle, continues to lead as the All-island Schools segment of the Dialog 4G-the Sunday Times Most Popular Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year 2017 reaches the ninth week.
However as at last week the Top 10 names of the list remain unchanged with the contest getting more competitive among the top three. Navindu remains at the top with a tally of 55886 after receiving a combined 6744 votes from the ended week. Zahira College’s Mohamed Najath also remains at second with the addition of 5512 combined votes and the gap between the top two is getting wider. Najath’s tally of 41918 and the deficit between the two is 13968, slightly higher than last week. At third is Lasith Croospulle, who received the most number of combined votes during the ended week which counts to 10789. This takes his tally to 34229 as he stands healthy to challenge the two at the top. Others in the list too have added to their existing tally but not as big as the top three.
This list will remain open until end of March, before it is pruned down to the Top 20. By the end of April the list will be cut down to 15 and by end of May only the Top 10 will be shown. This will be valid to all categories of the competition.
Pulitha Yasas Sri Sarathchandra of Sri Sumangala College Panadura continues to dominate the Emerging Schools category while the International Schools category is led by the sole runner Shimraz Shahil of Alethea International School. Important Coupons of the competition will be published in the Sunday Times, the two English dailies, the Daily Mirror and Dailyft, and the two Sinhala dailies, Daily Lankadeepa and Ada. Coupons will run for 26 weeks with the deadline set for week beginning on July 2. Readers could vote for their favourite schoolboy cricketer and take them to the winning post during that period.
Online voting could be done through Dialog Axiata’s digital online voting system Portal to vote for the Most Popular Cricketer via www.dialog. lk/cricket. Player registration closed on February 28. Both coupon votes and online votes will be counted on a weekly basis and the official results published every week in the five newspapers and their websites, as well as that of Dialog Axiata’s Online Portal. The deadline for online voting will be the same as for the coupons.
Accepting coupons valid for each week will be received only until Thursday noon on each week. Online voting for each week will be counted by Thursday noon each week. This deadline will be strictly implemented by the organisers. Coupons for the related week will NOT BE ACCEPTED AFTER THURSDAY NOON each week. This is an open competition and unethical campaigning will be a disqualification. The Sports Editor of the Sunday Times reserves all rights to disqualify such players if any illegal movements is found with proof. The whole process is closely monitored and reported by Pricewaterhouse Cooper, the official auditors of the competition.