Former cricketer from Siri Piyarathana Central of Padukka Hirantha Baddage has come up with a new idea to manufacture and sell cricket equipments that will enhance the performance of professional and upcoming cricketers.
Although this brand of cricket equipment began its production two years ago the press briefing and official launch was held on Wednesday (17) at the Mercantile Cricket Association new wing. It was announced the products named HB and Ovi equipments are now available in Sri Lanka.
“These equipments are already being used in the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and some other parts of the world. Two international cricketers in Oman are currently using the HB brand.
The Ovi brand is specially designed to be used by school children. These equipments are manufactured in India to the highest quality,” said the founder Hirantha Baddage.
Equipments such as bats, balls, pads, gloves to bags are manufactured with the same brand name HB.
Former principal of Siri Piyarathana Central Dias Dharmasena said that the boys at that school did not have balls to play matches and went around collecting money to buy the balls.
“We did not have enough materials for cricket at that time and even used torn matting for matches. We used to buy even second hand matting from other schools too. The boys were good in the game and I have seen them hitting sixes, specially coming off the arms of Baddage. Hope Baddage will go on a long journey with his brand of cricket equipment,” said Dharmasena who is now the Commissioner General of examinations at the Ministry of Education.
JAKA Indrajith who is the secretary of the Sri Lanka Schools Cricket Association, said that there are many girls teams now wanting to play cricket around the country. But they are finding it difficult to purchase equipments which have reached high prizes. A ball that cost about Rs. 500/- earlier now costs about Rs. 3000 each.
“We want to introduce tape ball cricket to be played among girls teams for now. There are many teams in the under-13 age category who can start with tape ball cricket,” said Indrajith.