Sports
Youth athletes to scale new heights to qualify for Asian event
Sir John Tarbet Senior Athletics Championships
by Reemus Fernando
Sri Lanka Athletics has introduced tough qualifying standards to pick a team for the upcoming Asian Youth Athletics Championships which will be held in Kuwait in October.
Youth athletes aspiring to qualify for the biennial event will get the final opportunity to impress selectors when the Sri Lanka Schools Athletics Association conducts their premier event, the Sir John Tarbet Senior Athletics Championships in September.
The Asian Youth Championships is the only Asian event where Sri Lanka has won medals at every edition. Sri Lanka won three medals when the event was last held in Hong Kong in 2019.
A senior official of Sri Lanka Athletics said that the governing body has considered both the average bronze winning performance of the last three editions and Asia’s eighth best performance in this age category in each event during 2021 before setting up qualifying standards.
It is the first time that Sri Lanka Athletics has published qualifying standards for a youth event.
“We want to set the record straight,” Saman Kumara, Sri Lanka Athletics statistician told The Island.
“Generally it is the average bronze winning standard that we consider for selection. But this time we considered the other factors as well as the youth athletes are returning after a two year break due to Covid 19 pandemic.”
He said that in the event of athletes not reaching the set qualifying standards the team would be selected giving prominence to athletes who were the closest to the standards.
Sri Lanka has won a total of nine medals including a gold medal during the last three editions of the championships where some of Sri Lanka’s present champions gained their first competitive international exposure.
Current national 110 metres hurdles champion Roshan Ranatunga and leading triple jumper Chamal Kumarasiri both won silver medals when the event was first held in 2015.
Sri Lanka has won most of the medals at these championships in girls’ and boys’ 400 metres hurdles.
The country won three medals when the event was last held in Hong Kong in 2019. St. Sebastian’s College, Moratuwa sprinter Navishka Sandesh in the boys’ 400 metres and Kandy hurdler Amesha Hettiarachchi in the girls’ 400 metres hurdles won a silver and a bronze respectively while the country’s relay team clinched a silver medal in the medley relay.
Sri Lanka has received nine quota places for athletes and two for officials from the event organizers for the October event.
The Sir John Tarbet Senior Athletics Championship, the final selection event for the Asian Youth Athletics Championships will be held from September 14 to 16.
The Sri Lanka Cricket Selection Panel has named the following squads for the upcoming Tri-Nation ‘A’ Series and the Four-Day Series.
The Tri-Nation One-Day Series, featuring Sri Lanka ‘A’, India ‘A’, and Afghanistan ‘A’, will be played at the Rangiri Dambulla International Cricket Stadium (RDICS), Dambulla, commencing on 9 June 2026.
The Four-Day Series between Sri Lanka ‘A’ and India ‘A’ will be played at the Galle International Cricket Stadium (GICS), Galle, with the first match scheduled to begin on 25 June 2026.
The Sri Lanka Cricket Selection Panel has selected the following squads to play in the West Indies Emerging Tour of Sri Lanka 2026.
The West Indies and Sri Lanka emerging teams will play two four-day games and three one-day games during the bilateral contest.
The tour will begin on the 8th of June with the first four-day game at MRICS, Hambantota, while the second four-day game will start on the 15th of June at the same venue.
One-day games will be played on the 22nd, 24th, and 26th of June.
The first two one-day games will be played at the SSC, and the final at the NCC.
A two-member ICC delegation that visited Dhaka earlier this week will report its findings and observations to the governing body. According to an ICC media release, directors Dr Mohammed Moosajee and Tavengwa Mukuhlani engaged with “a range of stakeholders to review developments linked to the BCB”.
Moosajee and Mukuhlani arrived in Dhaka on June 1, after which they met BCB’s ad-hoc committee members, including president Tamim Iqbal. The pair also met with members of the BCB’s election commission, with the polls scheduled to be held on June 7.
ESPNcricinfo has learned that the delegation also met with BCB directors who had resigned from the previous board. Among the directors who didn’t resign, Asif Akbar and Ahsan Iqbal Chowdhury were in the group that also met the ICC delegation in a separate meeting on June 2.
Afterwards, Aminul Islam, the former Bangladesh captain who was the BCB president until April, claimed that they urged the ICC to not recognise any election conducted by or under the authority of the ad-hoc committee on June 7 or at any other time. Aminul, who still considers himself the BCB president, said that the BCB’s ad-hoc committee should correct their May 31 press release regarding the ICC delegations’ visit to Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s High Court rejected a writ petition that challenged the legality of the election schedule and voter list for the upcoming BCB elections on June 7.
The bench of Justice Bhishmadev Chakrabortty and Justice Md Ashif Hasan passed the rejection order stating that the petition was not presented properly before it. The petition was filed on May 18, a month and a bit after the country’s sports ministry dissolved the BCB’s board of directors on April 7. They appointed an 11-member ad-hoc committee led by Tamim, the former Bangladesh captain, on the same day.
[Cricinfo]
SLC name squads for Tri-Nation ‘A’ series and Four-Day series
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