The national selectors pruned the original 140-member pool to 28 players and they are still not in a position to select the final team which is scheduled to leave on November 23. Sri Lanka U-19 team will be on a month's tour till December 25. Sri Lanka will also field a team for the under 19 World Cup to be held from January 11 to February 2, next year. Although the under 19 players are mostly from schools, the Sri Lanka School Cricket Association has very little or no authority as the negotiations are between the Indian and Sri Lanka Cricket Boards.
The team will be playing a three day game (Hyderabad), three Test matches at Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Ahmedabad. The three one-dayers are at Rajkot, Baroda and Pune. There are four players Benedictine Pradeep Hewage, Thomian Upeka Fernando, Trinitian S. Morathota and Dilhara Fernando of De Mazenod, Kandana in the present pool who played against the Indian Under 19 last year.
* Two exhibition matches of 20 overs each will be played at the NCC grounds on 19th Sunday, play commencing at 9.00 am. One team will be captained by former All Ceylon cricketers Gerry Gooneratne and D. D. Jayasinghe. In the other match former Sri Lanka captain and ace leg spinner D. S. de Silva and former Test batsman and vice captain Roy Dias will captain the two teams respectively.
* Medical Faculty of Galle recorded an easy win over the Arts Faculty, Matara, in their inter-faculty cricket match, played recently on the Uyanwatta grounds Matara.
Medical Faculty, batting first, made 251 for 9 in 45 overs (Savin Semage 148, Harsha Wijepala 23, Prasantha Kumara 21 n.o., Jayalathge 3/60, Bandara 1/45). In reply, Arts Faculty were shot out for 175 in 37 overs (T. Jaya 45, Praboda 27, N. D. Dahanayake 4/37, S. Thembuwanarachchi 2/25, Pradeep Fernando 1/2).