Srimantha Wijeyeratne Shines at CricketFest Canada

September 5, 2018 Dwayne Fernandes Cricket Scoops, Sports Scoops 0

It the last few days, the sport of cricket set Canada alight with CBCSports.ca streaming the CricketFest Canada from King City, Ontario, the same venue where the inaugural Global T20 Canada was recently played. The series is part of the annual Cricket Canada Summer Festival and the four teams who competed in this series over three days and a total of eleven matches were Canada A, West Indies B, Cricket Canada Senior Team and Toronto Bears.

The qualifiers to the ICC 2020 T20 World Cup begin soon and Canada is one of the many teams that will be aspiring to make it to the major tournament, but for that, they need to play more cricket. That’s why this CricketFest was of major importance, giving the Canadian cricketers enough of match practice, and also exposure to a team from West Indies.

“They need to play more cricket — there’s no doubt about that. They need to play against opposition which is exciting and the Windies B side is stacked full of exciting players,” said Mike Haysman, one of the four CricketFest commentators on duty in Canada.

CricketFest

One of the cricketers who was part of the winning team at the GT20 Canada was Srimantha Wijeyeratne, a Sri Lankan-born Candian wicket-keeper batsman. Read Scoops was lucky enough to catch up with him for an interview after that tournament, following which, he represented the Cricket Canada National Academy in the CricketFest.

Now this is an aggressive cricketer who bats with a lot of flamboyance, so you won’t be surprised when I say that the T20 game suits his style. He had a couple of quiet games but made a huge impact when his team took on Canada A on 2nd September 2018. He smashed his juniors all around the park in an innings that helped his team up to a massive score of 214/3 in their 20 overs.

What followed was a tame performance by the A-team, who were restricted to just 128/8 in the reply. However, all the focus was on that innings from Wijeyeratne, who scored 69(31), having hit 8 fours and 4 sixes in his knock, while also pulling out a helicopter shot that would even put the great MS Dhoni to the test. For a whole playback of that game, click here.

Take a look:

Highlights of the Canada Vs West Indies B game:

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About Dwayne Fernandes 2315 Articles
Indian, 28 years old. Avid cricket fan. Business Management Graduate. Twitter and Instagram - @dwayneeeboy