Ruhuna, Uthura, Basnahira walkaway empty-handed as Wayamba, Uva, Kandurata and Nagenahira to clash in the Semis.

The inaugural SLPL is now on its peak time as the Semi finals are to be began ob few days later.

The surprise was the teams who were looking to win the title lost their way in the tournament. Basnahira, which Dilshan captained, had a great side but failed in the league as the couldn't win a match after their win in the first match.

Everyone went to say Ruhuna will fancy their chances as Malinga and Afridi were in their side. But they were also failed to make the semis.

It was not a good series for the Uthura team as they couldn't find proper combination and their master Murali didn't come to best.

But nevertheless Wayamba Made the semis with no trouble. It was spectacular to watch how their youngsters coped in the league.

Uva and Nagenahira came through to the semis with ups and downs, but however Kandurata's come back made the tournament more interesting. It happened after Jayasuriya's comeback and he turned his team's fortune's around.

WAYAMBA UNITED - Mahela Jayawardene

KANDURATA WARRIORS - Sanath Jayasuriya

UVA NEXT - Thilina kandamby
NAGENAHIRA NAGAS - Angelo Mathews

Official Sri Lankan Squad announced for WCT20 2012

It was yesterday(23rd) when we announced our dream team for WCT20 and today we have received the official team for the world cup. It was only the inclusion of Dilshan Munaweera challenged our dream squad instead of kapugedara's conclusion. Mahela captains the team.

Akila Dananjaya and Dilshan Munaweera has been called in for the National team for the first time and Ajantha Mendis gets call back.

Here is the official team for the ICC T20 World Cup 2012-Sri Lanka

1.Mahela Jayawardene (Captain/Bat)
2.Angelo Mathews (vice Captain/All)
3.Kumar Sangakkara (Bat/Wk) [Subject to fitness]
4.TM Dilshan (All)
5.Lasith Malinga (Bowl)
6.Nuwan Kulasekara (Bowl) [Subject to fitness]
7.Ajantha Mendis (Bowl)
8.Thisara Perera (All)
9.Rangana Herath (Bowl)
10.Dinesh Chandimal (Bat/Wk)
11.Jeewan Mendis (All)
12.Lahiru Thirimanne (Bat)
13.Shaminda Eranga (Bowl)
14.Dilshan Munaweea (Bat)
15.Akila Dananjaya (Bowl)

Nuwan Kulasekara and Kumar Sangakkara are categorized under subject to fitness, but they will be available for the WCT20 as we all think.

Isuru_thiwa announces the dream team for WCT20 2012 - Sri Lanka

My Dream team for the ICC T20 World Cup - Sri Lanka

1.Mahela Jayawardene (Captain/OpeningBat)
2.TM Dilshan (OpeningBat/SpinBowl)
3.Dinesh Chandimal (Bat/WKeeper)
4.Kumar Sangakkara (Bat)
5.Angelo Mathews (ViceCaptain/Bat/SeamBowl)
6.Lahiru Thirimanne (Bat)
7.Jeewan Mendis (Bat/SpinBowl)
8.Thisara Perera (Bat/SeamBowl)
9.Shaminda Eranga (SeamBowl)
10.Akila Dananjaya (SpinBowl)
11.Lasith Malinga (SeamBowl)

12.Ajantha Mendis (SpinBowl)
13.Nuwan Kulasekara (SeamBowl)
14.Chamara Kapugedara (Bat)
15.Sachithra Senanayake (SpinBowl)

I think the top 11 is well Balanced and if changes are needed due to pitch conditions, you can either take Ajantha Mendis in a Spinning track, can take Kulasekara in order to swing the bowl. I believe Chandimal should bat at No.3. Senanayake is a handy bowler who can bat a bit can replace a batsman also because the team seems high batting weighed. Kapugedara is a frequent choose as he is a big hitting batsman and is in good form in SLPL. The rewards should be given to Shaminda Eranga and Akila Dananjaya for their top performances in SLPL. Otherwise the same, frequent team for SL.

cheers, isuru_thiwa

Martin Wickramasinghe and Sinhalese literature

http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2001/pix/PrintPage.asp?REF=/2010/06/13/mon03.asp

"My body grew like that of any Sinhala villager. My mind, however, developed differently. The benefit of private education from a centre of learning or from learned pundits were not available to me. I resorted to leaning by directly exploring my world and by eagerly reading books" - Martin Wickramasinghe. In this week's column, I want to examine the life and times of Martin Wickramasinghe and his overarching influence on Sinhalese literature. As we celebrate his 120 birth anniversary, it is pertinent to look back, at least briefly, on the literary legacy of Martin Wickramasinghe. Martin Wickramasinghe is Sri Lanka's greatest authors and intellectuals. He began to write in his mother tongue at the age of 13 years and continued to write both in Sinhala and English until the age of 86. Some of his major novels and short stories have been translated into English, Russian, German, Dutch, Chinese, Romanian, and Tamil Languages. Martin Wickramasinghe published his first novel "Leela" in 1914. "Gahaniyak" (A Woman).Of his work, the most prominent Gamperaliya (Village in Transition) was published in 1944. He has published 14 novels. Martin Wickramasinghe has written and published a total of 107 short stories. The first collection was published in 1924 under the title Martin Wickramasinghe was born in 1890 in the pastoral village of Koggala in the Sothern province of Sri Lanka. Like many authors of universal fame, Wickramasinghe was greatly influenced by the surroundings of his native habitat, its panoramic beauty and the down-to-earth life led by its inhabitants. Although he subsequently migrated to Colombo and spent a large part of his life there, Wickramasinghe could not forget the village of Koggala and its unassuming villagers and socio-cultural life, particularly, at the tail end of colonialism in Sri Lanka. The village of Koggala and its folks were vividly captured in his literary productions in general and in Gamperaliya in particular. Martin Wickramasinghe was, by and large, a self-educated (auto-didactic) intellectual who dominated the milieu. His multi-faceted personality spread over diverse areas such as journalism, literary criticism, public sphere as a cultural intellectual, philosophy and anthropology. As a cultural critic, Martin Wickramasinghe played a pivotal role in introducing psychoanalysis and some of the scientific concepts such as Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, for the first time, to a Sinhalese readership. He was in the forefront of inventing Sinhalese wardsfor English scientific terms such as evolution, at a time when the medium of instruction was switched over to vernacular from English. Milieu in transition Martin Wickramasinghe' enduring legacy should be examined against the milieu he was born into as he grew up to become a formidable cultural and social intellectual. When Wickramasinghe was born, it was the hay day of British colonialism in Sri Lanka. The collapse of feudalism and emergence of capitalism with the political and economic independence in the horizon was indeed an eventful era, marked by unprecedented socio-economic upheavals. One of the salient characteristics of the time was the dismantling of the monarchy and the British who conquered the island, developing the rudimentary infrastructure as a part of the British Empire. The education which was primarily aimed at producing a local English educated bureaucracy to support the British administration, led to the formation of a class of professionals such as clerical workers and teachers and the emergence of a business class. This, then turned the socio-economic order dominated by landed gentry topsy-turvy . It was this transition of the milieu which Martin Wickramasinghe vividly captured as a sub-text in his trilogy Gamperaliya (Village in transition), Kali Yugaya (era of Kali) and Yuganthaya (End of an era). Gamperaliya as a seminal literary work Apart from its rich Sinhalese colloquial idiom, the novel Gamperaliya marked an important millestone in the evolution of Sinhalese fiction in general and in the genre of novel in particular. The pre-independent era in Sinhalese fiction was marked by literary productions, which were primarily used as vehicles for political propaganda. For instance novels by Piyadasa Sirisena, who wanted to instil morale values in the readers and to stir patriotic sentiments, were inundated with long harangues and rather incredible plots. The language and the idiom in those novels were also monotone and artificial. Some of the characteristics of the early Sinhalese novels were the absence of evolution of characters, artificial dialogues, deliberately inserted diatribues, and the deliver of sermons to the readers. Gamperaliya which is now widely accepted as the first ever Sinhalese novel was a marked departure from the hitherto established tradition of Sinhalese novel. For the first time, Martin Wickramasinghe set the precedence of realistic novel in Sinhalese literature. It was through Gamperaliya that Sinhalese novels reached maturity in diverse aspects, albeit not an unblemished masterpiece in Sinhalese literature. Gamperaliya is marked for, among other things, use of colloquial Sinhalese idiom, application of psychological concepts in the evolving three dimensional characters and literary concepts such as inter-texuality (story within a story) and generation of novel tropes. Although the plot is, somewhat, similar in character to Anton Chekov's Cherry Orchard, Martin Wickramasinghe vividly depicted the socio-economic transformation that took place in the milieu as a sub-text of the novel. The story revolves around the family of Kaisaruwattes who represents decaying feudalism and Piyal, a young bright teacher of English symbolises the emerging business class. In a way, in Gamperaliya, Martin Wickramasinghe has codified the post-colonial economic history of Sri Lanka in the most creative and artistic manner. The author has exploited to the maximum, every avenues of creativity to arrive at the central theme. For instance, vividly realised descriptions of nature are often synchronised with the changing moods of the characters. It should be stated here that the author has not used colloquial Sinhalese idiom in its raw form as some of the so called contemporary Sinhalese literary award winners would interpret to achieve their ends. In fact, Wickramasinghe adapted colloquial Sinhalese idiom into fiction in an ingenious manner. Wickramasinghe further expanded his thesis in the two novels of the trilogy Kali Yugaya and Yuganthaya. One of the factors that made Martin Wickramasinghe a literary genius of Sri Lanka is that he was a bilingual who read voraciously to understand world literature. His wide ranging reading on diverse array of subjects such as literature, philosophy, science and psychology earned him the title of 'Sage of Koggala'. The enduring literary legacy of Martin Wickramasinghe continues to influence contemporary Sinhalese literary scene. However, born in mind that the use of raw filth (bordering on pornographic literature) by so called post-modern Sinhalese literati, is not the refined colloquial Sinhalese idiom that Martin Wickramasinghe used in his corpus of writings. On the other hand, labyrinthine structure of a poor novel with equally poor syntax cannot be interpreted as a 'Post-modern novel'. Lessons are many to be learnt from the life and work of Martin Wickramasinghe.

Injuries to challenge Sri Lankan chances to win WCT20

It has been heartbreaking to hear some players get injured as the world cup is just on the hands of all. It started from the indian tournament  as the legendary Kumar Sangakkara got injured in quite a bad way. It is said that it would take some time to recover for him.

While SLC lose Sangakkara, it is another concern that the Sri Lanka's best emerging allrounder is just on a injury, Thisara Perera.
In SLPL he is not bowling as much due to this injury.

Earlier ICC T20 no 1 ranked Ajantha Mendis was also on an injury and has recovered from it as he now plays in SLPL.


Team Likely to play in WCT20 2012 - isuruthiwa choice before the SLPL Sparks.

1.Mahela Jayawardene (c/bat)
2.TM Dilshan(all)
3.Dinesh Chandimal (wk/bat)
4.Kumar Sangakkara(wk/bat)
5.Lahiru Thirimanne(bat) / Bhanuka Rajapaksa(bat)
6.Angelo Mathews(vc/all)
7.Jeewan Mendis(all) / Angelo Perera(all)
8.Thisara Perera(all)
9.Shaminda Eranga(bwl) / Nuwan Kulasekara(bwl)
10.Ajantha Mendis(bwl) /Rangana Herath(bwl)
11.Lasith Malinga(bwl)

The Inaugural Sri Lanka Premiere League 2012

T20 is an exciting form of cricket. Instead of 4 day 5 day  long term cricket, a cricket of 3 hours was found a few years earlier and it was of great success as the crowd began to love cricket. This short term version attracted hearts of so many spectators. And also younger people began to play cricket more. We saw what IPL and BPL did to their country's cricket. So Sri Lankans wanted to have a similar T20 tounament. So making every cricket fan happy, SLC board decided to hold SLPL 2012.

This will begin tomorrow (11th) . There will 7 teams fighting representing their respective provinces.

What made me so excited about this is because of young talent which comes through this. And I am excited to see the way my favourites will go on. 

Chandimal , Thirimanne, Perera, Jeewan and lots of youngers are going to prove themselves in this tournament. According to Mahela Jayawardene, Chandimal is gonna be a crucial player as he is an aggressive player.

Chandimal who has played about 45 ODI games has already bagged 2 centuries while Mathews, Thirimanne , kapugedara couldn't bag a century yet. Let's hope he will take the best out of this tournament. 

And Thisara Perera is the player who was recommended by Kumar Sangakkara for his blasting batting and inform bowling performances.

Let's see who else gonna impress in SLPL 2012

Cheers, isuru_thiwa