by Rex Clementine
There will be a residential training camp for Sri Lanka’s cricketers ahead of their tour of New Zealand that gets underway next month.
The training camp will take place from 16th to 23rd of February in a bid to help players get acclimatize to the conditions in New Zealand. The team will be based in a hotel in Nuwara Eliya and will commute to Radella daily, a half hour drive.
In recent times, Sri Lankan teams have based themselves at Dambulla and Pallekele where residential camps have been conducted before overseas tours. They have also undertaken the costly exercise of traveling overseas a week or two early before a tour like they did ahead of the 50 over World Cup in England in 2019 and the T20 World Cup in Australia last year. This time around the team management has proposed the more practical way of spending a week in Radella training and stimulating match situations and the board has backed the move.
Radella used to be a popular cricket center in the old days and the team used to train here before tours of England. However, the practice had been abandoned lately.
Sometime back there were ambitious plans to redevelop facilities at Radella and bring it to international standards. The venue received a major boost when it hosted games of the ICC Under – 19 World Cup in 2000 but since then the venue has received little backing.
There are huge commercial and tourism benefits if the venue is redeveloped and now perhaps is the time for authorities to take serious note of doing something about it.
Sri Lanka play two Tests, three ODIs and three T20s in New Zealand next month.