FOURTEEN TEAMS VIE FOR PREMIER TIER ‘A’ TITLE
The blue ribbon of Sri Lanka’s domestic cricket season, the SLC Premier League Tier ‘A’ Tournament would get underway today (30) with a total of 14 teams divided into two groups vying for top honours. The defending champions Chilaw Marians CC along with the last year Plate champions Moors SC, NCC, Ragama CC, Army SC, Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) SC and the Tamil Union are the seven teams in Group ‘A’.
The Group ‘B’ comprises of last year runnersup SSC, Colts CC, CCC, BRC, Saracens SC, Badureliya CC and the new entrants Negombo CC who were promoted by virtue of becoming champions of the Premier Tier ‘B’ tournament last year.
Meanwhile, there have been some major changes and crossovers by leading players to other clubs with the defending champions Chilaw Marians CC being the badly affected team.
Top spinner Malinda Pushpakumara who led the Marians to their title win last year has changed over to CCC.
Shehan Jayasuriya has moved to Negombo CC, Asitha Fernando has joined the NCC, Sachithra Serasinghe and Isuru Udana both have joined Tamil Union.
The others to change over were Lahiru Milantha from Ragama CC to Tamil Union, Sachith Pathirana from CCC to Badureliya CC, Milinda Siriwardana from SSC to Saracens
SC, Nipun Karunanayake from Bloomfield to
Saracens SC, Sandun Weerakkody from NCC to SSC, and Suranga Lakmal from Tamil Union to SLPA CC.
After the completion of the round-robin matches the top four teams from the two groups would advance into the Super Eight Tournament which will be played over four days at neutral venues.
The remaining six teams from the two groups will clash in the Plate Championship with
the team coming out on top being promoted to the top division whilst the team finishing at the bottom of the Super Eight will be demoted
to the lower division.
Meanwhile, the Premier Tier ‘B’ Tournament is slotted to be played from December 21 and the schedule has not yet been finalised by Sri Lanka Cricket.