Dellon keeps ticking along
Dellon Peiris, the left-arm spinner from S. Thomas' College, Mt. Lavinia moves ahead as the leader of All-Island Schools at the end of 12th week of the Dialog 4G- the Sunday Times Most Popular Schoolboy / Schoolgirl Cricketer of the Year 2018 competition.
Dellon takes his tally to 11769, after adding 1749 combined votes during the ended week, and leads his immediate rival, Sachin Silva, by 5444 votes. Sachin of St. Peter's College, added 1256 combined votes and took his final count to 6325.
But the true performer of the ended week is Vihan Gunasekara of D. S. Senanayake College. With the best count of addition for the week -- 2991 combined votes -- Vihan moved to third place dislodging Ananda College skipper Asel Sigera to fourth position. Last week Vihan, now with a total of 4311, advanced to fourth from sixth, and with this week's progress, he clearly has the opportunity to chal- lenge Sachin and even Dellon, with 14 more weeks to go. The list of competitors remains at 21 and only the names of players who have obtained over 30 votes is published.
Denuwan Perera of Carey College, who claimed the top spot of the Emerging Schools category last week, further cemented his status by taking his total to 4787. The ended week gave Denuwan an addition of 980 combined votes, the best in this segment, as he leads the new occupant at second place, by 1978 votes.
The second place now belongs to Kenula Gunaratne of St. Aloysius College Ratnapura, who added 707 combined votes to push down former leader Sonara Karunathunga to third place. Kenula made his progress gradually and shows great promise of an intense battle with Denuwan in time to come. Sonara of Ananda Sasthralaya meanwhile, slid down to third place. He added 434 during the ended week and is with 2771 of total votes by now. He trails Kenula by just 38 votes and a little acceleration could put him back on track to the top.
Harshitha Samarawickrama of Anula Vidyalaya, continues to lead the Girls' Category, maintaining her lead by 1470 against Pabasara Ranabahu of Rathnavali Girls' School Gampaha. Harshitha's total count reached 4082 by this week as Pabasara maintained her progress with a tally of 2612. Kaveesha Dilhani of Devapathiraja MV, Rathgama and Ruwini Nandasena of St. Joseph's Girls School are the other two contenders in the list.
Coupons started appearing from October 1 in the Sunday Times and it will follow throughout every week in the two English dailies, the Daily Mirror and DailyFT, and the two Sinhala dailies, Daily Lankadeepa and Ada and Sinhala Weekend, Deshaya. Coupons will run for 26 weeks 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), came alive from October 1 with player registrations. The online registration process ended on November 30, but with greater demand registrations will be extended until December 31. Players who wish to enter the fray will have to confirm their participation by registering online with -- www.dialog.lk/cricket/register. Even schoolboy cricketers whose names are entered into the competition by readers must register before that deadline.
Names of players who registered online will be officially scrutinised of their eligibility and entered to the online voting mechanism, while the customary voting through coupons will be still on. The Online Portal is open for voting while online registration will be still accepted up to December 31. The names of registered players will be released weekly, every Friday after the cutoff date of Wednesday for weekly scrutinising each week until the deadline. 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.