Australian cricket teams to visit Jaffna in early July
View(s):In early July for the first time since the end of the bloody civil war that gripped Sri Lanka for nearly 30 years, a foreign cricket team will be touring the North of the country. It might only be a combined Under-18 side from Melbourne’s Ferntree Gully District Cricket Association and the Australian Hellenic Federation. However the player’s in the Northern Region have been cricket starved for so long and they will be eagerly waiting to take on the Australian boys.
It is only fitting that after an entire generation of kids in the north missed out on playing the game, it will be a team of young school boys from Melbourne who are sewing the first seeds to foreign cricket reconciliation. It’s rather ironic to note that one of the boys to join the Hellenic Federation team is Akat Mayoum, a refugee himself from war torn Sudan.
Teams from Ferntree Gully and Yarra Valley have toured Sri Lanka 6 times, with the help of David Cruse from G’day Lanka, some at the height of the war, but this is the first time they have been able to venture north. They keep returning to play cricket against the local school boy teams because of the passion and commitment these kids show towards the game.
Both Ferntree Gully and Yarra Valley have long had an affinity with Sri Lankan cricket with no less than seven former players from the National Team playing for these two associations. The likes of Roshan Mahanama now an ICC match referee, Dulip Samaraweera whose brother Thilan was injured in the Pakistan terror attack, Kosala Kuruppuarahi , J.C. Gamage, Ruwan Kalpage, Ishara Amarasinghe and Prabath Nissanka have all spent time playing in Australia at local level.
The Foundation of Goodness will be hosting a game for the Australian team in Killinochi following a seven hour bus trip from Colombo. They will meet a combined North/ East side on July 1. Kushil Gunasekera who runs The Foundation has been instrumental in rebuilding the lives of people in the Southern regions of Sri Lanka after the devastating Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004. He is now replicating his work in the Northern Provinces with the help of Muttiah Muralitharan and Kumar Sangakkara who are also trustees of The Foundation.
Murali, Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene have gone a long way to help rebuild the ties that bind the country through cricket. Last year they staged the Murali Harmony Cup, a Twenty20 Under-19 tournament, with the support of the Sri Lankan Army. Members of the force built a new ground with facilities in Oddusudan, near Mullaitivu which once staged one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Grounds were built in record time and the support received from the Army only further shows the steps being taken to try and bring the country together again.
Thousands of spectators turned out to watch the tournament, which were played between combined teams from war-affected towns in the North against top school teams from southern, western and central Sri Lanka. Scouts have already brought several talented young players they have discovered from the North to Colombo for further development and more will follow if these kids continue to have the opportunity to take part in games against touring teams.
The Australian team of boys and touring party of 34 are excited that they are the first foreigners to make the journey to the top of Sri Lanka. They will be touring around the beautiful country over two weeks, being hosted to five cricket matches throughout. It will be an extremely valuable learning curve for both sides and one that proves only good can come from the game of cricket. -NA
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