Sri Lanka rounds off ICC CSR activities

Sri Lanka’s Dinesh Chandimal, Lahiru Thirimanne and Thisara Perera took time out of their busy training schedule yesterday (15 June) to meet with kids from ‘Chance to Shine’ and share some coaching tips while also answering questions from the children.

Children from the London area met with the three players at The Oval after the team concluded training and were split into two groups, one aged 15-16 and the other six to eight years old. The two groups had a series coaching tips and encouragement given to them by the trio, however the onset of rain curtailed the coaching side of proceedings as the group had to take shelter from the rain.

The players then answered a series of questions from the group including how they got into playing professionally and what were the best ways to maintain fitness with a heavy schedule of cricket.

At the end of the Q&A, Chandimal said: “It was a shame we didn’t have a chance to play a bit more cricket with the kids today as they’d come out specially but the rain took over. It was good to be able to answer some questions and hopefully our advice will help the kids that came along today to perhaps take up a career in cricket. It’s important to take time out of one’s schedule to do things like this and I’m please Lahiru and Thisara and I managed to spend a little time with these kids who are part of the Chance to Shine program.”

‘Chance to Shine’ which is aided by the UK-based charity the Cricket Foundation works regularly with the England and Wales Cricket Board. The charity’s ideal is bring cricket back to schools across the UK, before the Cricket Foundation launched the schools’ cricket program in 2005, fewer than 10% of state schools played competitive cricket. ‘Chance to Shine’ is now running in 7,000 schools and two million children have enjoyed cricket opportunities as a result.

The program is not just about cricket, young people involved in the program are developing essential life skills and values, such as leadership, discipline, teamwork and understanding how to win and lose.

To find out more about Chance to Shine, please visit www.chancetoshine.com.