2018 dawns with Dellon in the lead
As 2017 ends Dellon Peiris leads the Dialog 4G-the Sunday Times Most Popular Schoolboy / Schoolgirl Cricketer of the Year 2018 competition which reaches the end of its 13th week. Dellon, the prominent leg-spinner of S. Thomas' College, is maintaining a healthy pace and reached 13386 combined votes, to lead the All-Island Schools for yet another week.
Dellon added 1617 combined votes and enjoys a commanding lead of 5874 from Sachin Silva. Compared to last week, Dellon's deficit against Sachin has improved in numbers. Sachin of St. Peter's College, also shows real potential, by adding 1187 combined votes to take his total to 7512.
With the similar lineup going unchanged as last week, Vihan Gunasekara of D.S. Senanayake College remains at third with a count of 4464, followed by Ananda College skipper Asel Sigera and Lumbini College's Kavin Peiris. The rest in the lineup, where the total is 21, are yet to hit the 1000 and 11 of them are still to reach the 100 mark.
Denuwan Perera of Carey College, dominates the Emerging Schools category, by taking his total to 6034, after adding 1247 combined votes in the ended week. Denuwan leads Kenula Gunaratne of St. Aloysius College Ratnapura, by 2377 votes, while further moving ahead without much trouble. The rivalry now shifts for the second, third and fourth slots, which could fluctuate easily.
Kenula takes his total to 3657 and leads third-placed Sonara Karunathunga of Ananda Sasthralaya, by 563 votes. Thimira Malshan, also of Ananda Sasthralaya, sits at fourth way behind team mate Sonara, while Heshan Madushanka of Piliyandala Central remains at fifth position, still threatening others.
Harshitha Samarawickrama of Anula Vidyalaya, continues to lead the Girls' Category, maintaining her lead by 1539 against Pabasara Ranabahu of Rathnavali Girls' School Gampaha. Harshitha's total count reached 4433 by this week as Pabasara maintained her progress with a tally of 2894. Kaveesha Dilhani of Devapathiraja MV, Rathgama and Ruwini Nandasena of St. Joseph's Girls School are the other two contenders in the list.
Online Registration ends this weekend
Coupons will be published in the two English dailies, the Daily Mirror and DailyFT, and the two Sinhala dailies, Daily Lankadeepa and Ada and Sinhala Weekend, Deshaya with the deadline set for April 5, 2018. Readers could vote for their favourite schoolboy or schoolgirl cricketer and take them to the winning post during this period.
Dialog Axiata's online voting system through their official Online Portal to vote for the Most Popular Cricketer (www.dialog.lk/cricket) is open for voting while online registration will close today (December 31), midnight. Players who wish to enter the fray must confirm their participation by registering online with -- www.dialog.lk/ cricket/register. Online voting will be open until April 5, 2018.
Both coupon votes and online votes will be counted on a weekly basis and the official results published every week beginning next Sunday in the five newspapers and its websites.
The deadline for COUPONS and ONLINE VOTES will be every Thursday Noon. Online Votes received after the weekly cutoff time will be counted for the next week, while for Coupons, ONLY those numbered for the particular week will be taken into count. This week's digital voting count was monitored and approved by auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers.