The month of May is special for MJFCF which also coincides with the birthday of the Founder and Settlor of the Foundation Merrill J. Fernando. The MJF Trophy for Excellence in Cricket for the visually impaired is one of the main features to commemorate this special day in the MJFCF calendar.
This year’s tournament was even more special for 3 reasons – 1 – it brought in 4 teams to the fray instead of the usual 2. Secondly it also coincided with the 5th annual Dilmah Global Partners conference in Colombo. And thirdly - the tournament was played on the T20 format for the 1st time.
Teams representing Ranaviru Cricket Team, The A Team from the Deaf & Blind School of Ratmalana, Soubhagya Maha Vidyalaya Scholl for the visually impaired – Moneragala and CEI Plastics Cricket team competed for the championship trophy third year. Each team comprises of 3 players in the B1 (totally blind), and 4 each in the B2 (partially blind) and B3 (partially sighted) categories.
Neome left no stones unturned to make all the arrangements to conduct the preliminaries on 6th May and the finals on 7th May to a very high standard. The Federation for Cricket for the Visually Handicapped provided the neccesary support with their Officials for umpiring and scoring.
The Ranaviru Team emerged champions in the finals beating the CEI Plastics team quite comfortably. Put into bat 1st by CEI Plastics, The Ranaviru Team scored 166 for 6 in their allotted 20 overs and bowled out their opponents for 116 in the 18th over.
Rajiv Mathangaweera – Director of MJF Group inaugurated the proceedings earlier in the day and the prize distribution was graced by Settlor Merrill J. Fernando, Dilhan and Malik and all Directors of the Group as well as the Global partners of Dilmah who were attending the 5th Dilmah Global Partners conference.
