An old saying records that success has many fathers and failure is an orphan. Sri Lanka’s new discovery in cricket Praveen Jayawickrama may have come along to prove how true the saying goes.
One after another there have been claims that Jayawickrama, now 22, was discovered playing in various tournaments or picked up at a clinic and how the godfathers made recommendations to the higher-ups to preserve the kid.
Now yet another diamond digger, the Sinhalese Sports Club or SSC School of Cricket, contends that Jayawickrama is theirs with proof that the left arm spinner came through its mill along with scores of others to enter the Sri Lanka team or be on the fringes worthy to sport the Lion emblem on their shirts.
“He was just a 12-year old boy who told his parents that he wanted to improve his batting and bowling and I think he came to the right place,” said DDP Alwis a senior coach at the SSC School of Cricket that saw an international player in the making.
But Alwis warned that the only factor that can hold up Jayawickrama’s career or see him off altogether was too many cooks that can dilute his progress.
“We did not ask him to do big things,” recalled Alwis. “The only thing we told him to do was bowl wicket to wicket and everything else fell into place.
In competition you have to improve and he will be able to do this playing more matches and handled in the right way.”
The SSC School of Cricket is one of many junior academies spread throughout the country that also offers scholarships to less privileged budding players and their most prized product before Jayawickrama was Kusal Mendis among a host of others that also includes the latest batting find Pathum Nissanka and others, some of whom are expected to make the grade.
Jayawickrama’s mentors at the SSC School of Cricket contend he is not just a single-purpose exponent but someone who can turn out to be a top notch all-rounder the likes of which have not been seen before in the Sri Lanka team.
“We used to see him as a very steady batsman and whoever is looking for an allrounder can find one in him,” said Alwis.
Jayawickrama took his early steps at cricket while at Holy Cross College in Kalutara and then enrolled at the SSC School of Cricket as a 12-year old and ended his senior school career at St. Sebastian’s College in Moratuwa.
On a tour of India with the academy, Jayawickrama took 12 wickets from four matches and in that same year 2013 ended up as the player of the tournament in a junior championship that featured several leading cricket schools in the island.
It was no surprise then that Jayawickrama has come to be the most photographed and written about player on the rise, the typical well brought up kid for mothers who are looking for role models for their off-spring.