Dellon a cool 10000 votes ahead in count 20

With merely six more weekends before the closure,

S. Thomas' College leg- spinner Dellon

Peiris stretched his lead close to 10000 in the All-Island

Schools as the Dialog 4G-the Sunday Times Most Popular Schoolboy/ Schoolgirl Cricketer of the Year 2018 competition as it reached its last leg of the competition.

Last weekend the final counts of all players in all three categories were sans online votes, but this week with the system pumped in once again, the counts include those votes that were uncounted.

This week, his addition of combined votes is 2823 while his lead against Sachin Silva swells to 9550, far ahead from last week's. If Sachin of St. Peter's College, is intending a surprise on Dellon, he and his followers have a massive task ahead with just six weekends remaining. Sachin added 2293, the second best addition next to Dellon's, while reaching a tally of 15979 combined votes.

The rest in the lineup are moving ahead but rather slowly. The only surprising move that occurred this week was Kalana Perera of S. Thomas' College overtaking Mahesh Theekshana of St. Benedict's College. Kalana pushed down Mahesh to take the seventh slot, only by a mere margin, but when comparing with the two front runners, the rest are way behind to at least make a slight impact.

Behind Dellon and Sachin, Vihan Gunasekara of D.S. Senanayake College, Ananda College skipper Asel Sigera and Kavin Peiris of Lumbini College follow in down the order among the top five.

Denuwan Perera of Carey College continues to dominate the Emerging Schools while taking his tally to 13610. He raked in 1835 combined votes by this weekend while stretching the deficit against Kenula Gunasekara of St. Aloysius College Ratnapura, to 3780. Kenula added 1376 combined votes to take his total count to 9830.

Sonara Karunathunga and Thimira Malshan, both of Ananda Sasthralaya and Heshan Madushanka of Piliyandala Central follow in down the order for yet another week unchanged.

Harshitha Samarawickrama of Anula Vidyalaya, continues to lead the Girls' Schools category but the anticipated stiff challenge from Pabasara Ranabahu of Rathnavali Girls' School Gampaha suddenly changed the opposite direction by this week. Last week the gap between the two continued to narrow down but by this week it swelled up massively by 1571.

Harshitha added 1332 combined votes, and her total moved to 8598 while Pabasara's tally reached 7027 with the addition of 734. Kaveesha Dilhani of Devapathiraja MV, Rathgama and Ruwini Nandasena of St. Joseph's Girls School are the other two contenders in the list.

On coupons and online votes 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 in six more weekends. 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). Online voting will be open until April 5. Both coupon votes and online votes will be counted on a weekly basis and the official results published from every 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.