ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2020

430 Sri Lanka in 2019/20 relating to promotion and relegation between the tiers would be suspended implied that the Tier B competition would not be resumed; and that was indeed the case.  The upshot is that, for statistical purposes, the Premier League competition that began in January 2020 is now treated as taking place partly in the 2019/20 season, and partly in 2020.  So on 10 August Sri Lanka became the first, and only, country to resume a domestic competition that had previously been truncated by the pandemic. Tier Awas played to a conclusion, with 25 matches (16 in the Super Eights and nine in the Plate) fitted in to the following 18 days. After the Super Eights Colombo, who had won five of their ten matches over the season, including four against their Super Eight rivals, headed the lists and thus retained their Premier League title. The consolation prize of winning the Plate competition went to Moors, who had finished last in their initial group but won two of their three matches in the Plate and had by far the better of the draw in the other one.  The only other first-class cricket in Sri Lanka over this period consisted of two matches in September and October 2019 by Sri Lanka A against their Bangladeshi counterparts. Both were drawn, though big centuries by two 21-year-olds – Kamindu Mendis, better known as an ambidextrous bowler, and P.N.Silva (aka Pathum Nissanka) – can have done their prospects no harm. The annual match between MCC and the Champion County (Essex), which was due to be played at Galle at the end of March, did not take place owing to the pandemic. Silva finished among the top run-scorers across the 2019/20 and 2020 seasons. But he could not quite make the figure of a thousand runs that two others did: former national captain Dinesh Chandimal (Army; 1027 runs at 93.36, including a domestic record score of 354* in the last match of the season), and Nondescripts’ batsman and sometime wicketkeeper L.U.Igalagamage (more usually known as Lahiru Udana), whose 1059 runs at 81.46 included a score of 290* against Ragama, and a first-ball duck in the second innings of the same game. Tier B’s Bloomfield provided the seasons’ leading wicket-taker, Gayan Sirisoma, with 64 wickets in seven matches at an average of 14.03. Malinda Pushpakumara (Colombo), who had topped the wicket-takers for each of the three previous seasons, was one of five others to reach fifty wickets; typically for Sri Lanka, five of the top six wicket-takers were slow left-armers. (KSW) Premier League Tournament (Tier A) 2019/20: Final tables Group A P W WI L DWF DLF ND BatBP BowBP Pts CF* 12 14 0 8 0 0 1 Colombo 6 3 1 0 2 0 0 15.130 16.35 97.480 54.570 2 Colts 6 2 0 2 2 0 0 12.495 17.25 69.745 34.365 3 Sri Lanka Army 6 1 1 2 1 1 0 13.480 13.65 61.130 26.700 4 Burgher 6 1 0 3 2 0 0 13.440 13.80 55.240 11.900 5 Negombo 6 1 0 1 1 3 0 15.140 14.10 49.240 16.445 6 Sinhalese 6 1 0 0 1 4 0 14.230 13.35 47.580 17.895 7 Moors 6 0 0 3 1 2 0 13.185 14.25 35.435 17.920 Group B P W WI L DWF DLF ND BatBP BowBP Pts CF* 12 14 0 8 0 0 1 Chilaw Marians 6 2 1 2 0 1 0 11.650 16.05 65.700 25.485 2 Nondescripts 6 0 1 0 3 1 1 15.100 9.00 62.100 43.735 3 Saracens 6 0 1 2 3 0 0 11.555 10.95 60.505 25.045 4 Ragama 6 2 0 1 1 1 1 12.005 12.45 56.455 24.545 5 Tamil Union 6 1 0 1 1 3 0 11.175 13.35 44.525 20.425 6 Badureliya 6 1 0 1 1 1 2 9.760 9.00 38.760 15.415 7 Lankan 6 0 0 2 1 3 0 12.320 7.65 27.970 15.175