Sri Lankan Junior cricketers will face an uphill task to defend the title as the best schools cricket playing nation in the world when they embark on the U-15 World Cricket Championship to be held in England.

In addition to the match practice these youngsters received when they participated in a Asian Cricket Championship tournament in Malaysia recently, a pool of 25 players faced two trial matches held at the Bloomfield cricket grounds on Wednesday and Thursday.

The Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka (BCCSL) has decided to send two more players adding to a normal squad of 14 in an attempt to give more exposure to the youngsters who will be future assets to Sri Lanka.

However Sri Lanka's performance at the recently concluded Asian Cricket Championship tournament was very disappointing, as many had expected the Sri Lankan team to qualify for the final.

Sri Lanka won only four out of their six matches in the preliminary round, failing to defeat both Pakistan and India. The strong Indians eventually became the tournament champions while Pakistan finished runners up.

The defeat against the Pakistanis were attributed the failure of the batsmen to make runs while the team management acknowledge the Indians were ahead of us in every aspect of the game.

Oshadi Weerasinghe, the coach of the U-15 national team said they had utilised the tournament as preparation for the big tournament, the U-15 World Cup in England. He says it was the batsmen who let the side down while the bowlers were performing up to expectations.

Asked about the reasons for the team’s poor performances in Malaysia, coach Weerasinghe said: “It was a new experience for the young cricketers who had faced a foreign opposition for the first time there and even the team management had not been aware of the foreign standards.”

Weerasinghe says although Sri Lanka claimed to be the best school cricket playing nation in the world, he now realises that India may have surpassed the Sri Lankan’s.

The team management is happy that they have detected the mistakes and the weak points of the players and soon be able to remedy them before they embark on the important tour to England.

© CricInfo