~ How insurance ensures that cricket endures

Risk takers selected the wicket takers and padded-up for the Inter Insurance Company Cricket Sixes. 'The Sri Lanka Insurance Institute held hands with Strategic Insurance Brokers (SIB), to stage this leather chasing, willow wielding extravaganza at Colts Cricket Grounds, on Saturday 15th July. Play began at 8am with the participation of 17 teams vying for the Championship, and the Plate trophy, sponsored by “LAKVINSURE”, with Strategic Insurance Brokers,' said Udeni Kiridena CEO of the Sri Lanka Insurance Institute.

Insuring cricket is ensuring cricket. At a time when the national pastime, or as some say the national religion, the game of cricket is at the crossroads, with the Sri Lanka Cricket team seeing several recent ups and downs to say the least, the sponsoring of cricket by an insurance concern, is to ensure that great cricket endures. 'The continuance of cricketing tradition should be insured, if you know what I mean. It's not a mere play on words. After our successes at the World Cup in 1996, and then the bullish performances that followed, it appears there is uncertainty or at least an eerie lull in the Sri Lankan cricketing brand,' says Indrajith Fernando, of Strategic Insurance Brokers, the proud LAKVINSURE insurance and reinsurance Brokers to the nation.

This means there would be less talent from bottom up for the national cricket team to choose from, and even more pertinently, that there is no national cricketing ethos that produces superlative Sri Lanka Cricket players. In other words, Sri Lanka cricket isn't what it used to be.

‘Now, one of the reinsurance trade's best brands, Strategic Insurance Brokers, is coming forward to ensure that Sri Lankan cricket is Sri Lankan cricket -- swashbuckling, and full of possibility,' say organizers at the Sri Lanka Insurance Institute. All permanent staffers with not less than three months service were eligible to be team members of the hardball teams vying for the LAKVINSURE Plate and Bowl. The winners, the runners up team, the LAKVINSURE Plate Champions, the Bowl Champions, the best batsman, the best bowler, and the Man of the Series, were awarded at the end of the tournament. The honorable mention of the winners list is as follows: Bowl: Champions- Allianz Insurance, Runners up - Ceylinco General, Plate: Champions - SLIBA Stallions, Runners up - Fairfirst Insurance, Cup: Champions- Janashakthi General, Runners up - Softlogic Life.

'Don Bradman worked as a clerk for a real estate agent, before he was discovered and came by his almost freakish success that makes him one of cricket's greatest immortals. But that's how jobs ensure cricket. It's entry level sustenance. Insurance jobs, just like real estate jobs, and of course thousands of other jobs in the professional sector, can ensure that cricket endures, especially in these trying times for national cricket,' says Indrajith Fernando, SIB Director and brand architect of LAKVINSURE.

'Not that the insurance industry is going to fill up the national pool with talent. But all companies can contribute to the general drive for talent generation, and if we can be a catalyst and give a real lead, so be it,' he adds.

All reputed Insurance companies fielded teams at the Sixes, in a bid to carry away the prestigious awards on offer. Strategic Insurance Brokers (SIB) had spared no hard cash in this endeavor to prop up hard ball cricket, within the profession. This is on top of the many sponsorship packages that SIB's global Insurance partners have handled, including as strategic sponsors of the SLII conference this year, and the last.

The other facet of an insurance concern sponsoring a cricketing event is the much forgotten aspect of insurance -- it's the one industry in which the clients goal is to deal less with the service provider, at least ideally. If there are healthier people, they would deal less with insurance, but of course in hard reality many people don't think they enjoy the kind of health that would enable them to bypass insurance altogether.

Sports is one means by which health concerns of the majority of those insured for large sums can be kept at bay. Sponsoring sport is to be a responsible sponsor in that context, and it's part of LAKVINSURE brand marketeers business ethos to be a responsible catalyst for necessary assurance, such as consistent good health, as opposed to unnecessary insurance, such as the purchasing of expensive health insurance packages.

Strategic Insurance Brokers a reinsurance broker in Sri Lanka is a member of the Global Broker Network (GBN worldwide), represented in over 140 countries around the world.

Photo caption: CBA team the Winners of the SLII CRICKET TOURNAMENT - Lakvinsure Plate Trophy sponsored by Strategic Insurance Brokers