Lasith consolidates his lead over Nirmal

With another impressive haul of 12665 votes, Lasith Croospulle of Maris Stella College Negombo manages to maintain his lead which he gained last week of the AllIsland Schools segment of the Dialog 4G-the Sunday Times Most Popular Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year 2017. The 16th week comes in favour of Lasith overall, as his overall count reaches 111,846.

Lasith stands 8671 votes ahead of former leader Navindu Nirmal of St. Aloysius College Galle. Navindu accelerated by adding 10008 votes to his now overall tally of 103175, but that was not sufficient.

Mohamed Najath of Zahira College has slowed down. He received only 749 votes this week.

Pulitha Yasas Sri Sarathchandra of Sri Sumangala College Panadura continues to dominate the Emerging Schools category while the International Schools category is still led by Shimraz Shahil of Alethea International School.

The full list was pruned down to Top 20 from with the beginning of April the list will be further cut down to 15 by May. By end of May it will be shortlisted to the Top 10.

All-Island Schools

Lasith Croosepulle Navindu Nirmal Mohamed Najath Charana Nanayakkara Santhush Goonathilake Romesh Nallaperuma Dinitha Basnayake Helitha Vithanage Mohamed Rifaz Lakshina Rodrigo Nikesh Anjana Sahan Suraweera Dileepa Jayalath Hareen Buddhila P.A. Dananjaya Sammu Ashan Pasindu Sooriyabandara Sanjula Abeywickrama Asel Sigera Jehan Daniel

Emerging Schools 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. The count of week 16 of digital voting was monitored and approved by auditors Pricewaterhouse Cooper.