St. Peter’s defeated traditional rivals St. Joseph’s easily by 59 runs on the Duckworth/Lewis method in their annual limited over encounter played at the R. Premadasa Stadium yesterday. The encounter which is the 41st in the series saw the Peterites chalk up their 18th win to regain the Rev. Fr. Peter Pillai Memorial Challenge Trophy.

St. Peter’s taking first lease of the wicket began in an inauspicious start losing an early wicket with just ten runs on the board. They recovered thanks to some useful knocks coming from Saveen Gunasekera and Lakshina Rodrigo. Later skipper Chandula Jayamanne along with Sachin Dalpethado made useful knocks for the Peterites to reach 168 for 7 in the 39th over before bad weather hampered proceedings after which their innings came to an end.

The resumption saw the Josephians being given a revised Duckworth/Lewis target of 159 in 29 overs but they were unable to come to terms of the Peterite bowling trio of Vinu Mohotti, Ashanth Malka and Randel Seneviratne who together combined to bundle them out for just 99runs.

SCORES

St. Peter’s 166 for 7 in 38.4 overs (Saveen Gunasekera 44, Lakshina Rodrigo 20, Sachin Dalpethado 18, Chandula Jayamanne 40 n.o.: Hashindra Perera 2 for 10, Malshan Rodrigo 2 for 21)

St. Joseph’s 99 in 23 overs (Jehan Daniel 30, Pethum Madusanka 15: Vinu Mohotti 2 for 9, Ashanth Malka 2 for 10, Randel Seneviratne 2 for 30).