Matheesha bowls Ananda to a five wicket win

By Jatila KARAWITA

Prolific wicket-taker and off-spinner Matheesha Perera returned a splendid match bag of 9 for 103 as Ananda College, Colombo beat Dharmaraja College, Kandy by five wickets in their annual interschool cricket encounter ended at Ananda Mawatha last evening.

Perera, who claimed impressive figures of 6 for 46 to help his team dismisss Dharmaraja for a modest first-innings total of 164, was among the wickets once more as he captured 3 for 57 to bundle out the visitors for a paltry 131 in their second essay.

Earlier, Ananda resuming from an overnight 122 for 5, were bowled out for 233, with Deshan Wimaladharma top-scoring with 41. Trailing by 69 runs on the first-innings the Rajans failed to cope with a potent Ananda bowling attack led by Matheesha Perera and were shot out for 131, leaving the hosts to score a mere 62 runs off the alloted 15 mandatory overs.

Thus, Ananda reached the target with eight deliveries to spare while recording their 10th win for the 2008-2009 inter-school cricket season.

Dharmaraja 164 and 131 all out

(Prathap de Silva 33 n.o., T. Wedagedera 22, R. Sheman 3-52, Matheesha Perera 3-57, R. Herath 2-7)

Ananda (122-5 wkts cont) 233 all out

(Deshan Wimaladharma 41, Sachin Dewage 28, Madumal Jayaratne 29, Prathap de Silva 4-54, Ramesh Bandara 2-40) and 64 for 5 wkts. (Dinesh Chandimal 21, Prabodha Seneviratne 18, Prathap de Silva 3-24).