Sri Lankan team of ‘96 to tour Australia: Former World Cup champs reunion for their fans

BY TREVINE RODRIGO IN MELBOURNE

Cricket mad Sri Lankan fans are in for a rare treat thanks to popular Melburnians Ron Meerwald and former Sri Lanka World Cup hero Asanka Gurusinghe who have hatched a plan to reband the 1996 World Cup champion Sri Lanka team and fly them down to Australia.

For cricket starved Sri Lankan supporters who crave any event to storm every venue where their heroes perform, it will be an added bonus to watch their former idols before the Australian summer tees off featuring South Africa, Pakistan and then a three match one-day series against Angelo Matthews Sri Lankans early next year.

While it will be a commemoration of Sri Lanka’s greatest moment in its cricketing history, the touring veterans who are scattered in and out of their native homeland will be showcased before their adoring fans not just as tourists, but as an unit that will be pitted against former cricketers from Sri Lanka now domiciled in Australia, in a couple of T20 games in Sydney and Melbourne.

The plan for the proposed tour was unveiled recently a function at The Cricketers Arm Restaurant owned by former Sri Lankan hero Tillekeratne Dilshan in Colombo. It was attended by 200 prominent personalities, including past and present Sri Lankan cricketers and local media.
This historic tour has been acknowledged and received the blessings of Cricket Australia and Cricket Victoria. This will be the first time in 19 years that the former champion team members will travel together.

The tour has been made possible by Strategic Partnership Solutions was one of the pioneer companies in Sri Lanka dedicated to providing Workflow Management and Document Management solutions over the past 10 years.

S. P. Solutions will now be rebranded as Australian Strategic Partnerships (ASP) and will also be setting up a marketing and sales office in Melbourne, Australia.

As part of its rebranding and expansion strategy the company has decided to sponsor the 1996 ICC World Cup Champions tour to Australia!

The Tour will start with a T20 match played in Sydney on the 29th of October, followed by a Gala Dinner on the 30th. Thereafter the Team will fly into Melbourne where they will play a T20 Match on the 01st of November against a selection of former Sri Lankan Test players domiciled in Australia.

The tour will conclude with a grand ceremnony drawing 670 guests at a Gala Dinner, “A Night with the Champs”, on the 5th of November at The Grand on Cathies in Wantirna in Melbourne. The Team will depart Melbourne on the 6th of November.

Organizer’s Asanka Gurusinha & Ron Meerwald emphasized the enormity of putting this event together as they had to handle the the Player’s Air tickets, visas, insurance, travel, clothing, Sydney tour, game at South Morang, the Gala Dinner at the Grand on Cathies Lane, 3 coaching camps, food & lodging, etc.

ASP, the Company provides solutions across the following industries: Banking, Financial services, Insurance, Print Media, BPO Providers and Manufacturing, while working across the following functional verticals. Operations (delivering customer requests), Finance and Procurement, HR, and Marketing (CRM).

The Company’s flagship product eDGEVANTAGE, is Sri Lanka’s most widely used Business Process Management Platform. eDGEVANTAGE is also used in Australia, the Philippines and Japan, by our partners Ms. TurboViz Pvt Ltd of Australia, who manage mail rooms and related delivery workflows for large multi-nationals such as The Royal Bank of Scotland, IBM, HSBC and Deutche Bank.