This threesome looks to be interesting

Santhush Goonathillake of St. Peter's College has made indications that he is all serious in claiming the crown by maintaining a healthy lead by the third week's count of the Dialog 4G-the Sunday Times Most Popular Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year 2017 contest. Santhush lead the AllIsland Schools category with a tally of 620 votes.

However it seems there is someone else also looking into crash in to the party. Mohamed Najath of Zahira College now joins in at second place with a tally of 492 votes. Najath stands only 128 votes behind the leader, Santhush.

With Lakshina Rodrigo of St. Peter's College retaining his position at No.3 with a sizable addition of 357 votes, he takes his tally to 453. Lakshina stands 167 votes behind Santhush and with a mere 39 behind Najath. This threeprong battle could turn out to be an interesting battle in the weeks ahead.

Navindu Nirmal of St. Aloysius' College Galle is pushed down to fourth from second despite receiving 109 votes. Nirmal's tally moves up to 249 and can be a contender to oust the top three in time to come. Ananda College's Sammu Ashan remains at fifth while Lasith Croosepulle of Maris Stella College loses two more slots by the end of this week and sits at sixth. Others in the list are yet to make impressive additions.

The Emerging Schools category has a new leader in Pulitha Yasas Sri Sarathchandra, of Sri Sumangala College Panadura. He enters the fray with 78 votes within the ended week as Raveen Yasas of Devapathiraja College Rathgama remains at second with 22. Last year's winner of this category, Madawa Fernando of De La Salle College Mutwal becomes a non-runner as his school has informed officially that he no longer is a schoolboy cricketer representing the team. The International Schools category too made an early kickoff this season but it's still Shimraz Shahil of Alethea International School on the run.

How to register

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.

In addition Dialog Axiata have introduced a digital version with an online voting system through an Online Portal to vote for the Most Popular Cricketer (www.dialog.lk/ cricket).

Players who wish to enter the fray will have to confirm their participation by registering online with www.dialog.lk/cricket from January 8 to 31. Even schoolboy cricketers whose names are already in the competition, included by reader votes, must register during the month of January.

Players who registered online will be officially scrutinised of their eligibility and entered to the online voting mechanism from February 1, while the customary voting through coupons will be still on. 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 its websites, as well as that of Dialog Axiata's Online Portal. The deadline for online voting will be the same as for the coupons.