A HUNDREAD UNBORKEN YEARS BY R.B.
WIJEYSINHA
"This means war!"
It was war. Total and hellish. Everything In
the civilized world stopped, save the effort to live — and survive.
The English cricket season of 1939 was nearly
done, the last few matches left to be played. Two venerables, coated
now against the pre-autumn chill, watched snugly from the Long Room
at Lord's. The last lingering summer sun bathed the green and
hallowed turf, as the white clad figures flitted to and fro.
The island had soon become an extended military
fortress and a dumping ground of war supplies, men and material.
Several schools in Colombo and roundabout were to suffer loss of
accommodation and residence as one after another had to yield to the
need for provision of hospitals and barracks for troops now flooding
the country.
The worst to suffer was S. Thomas' College, Mt.
Lavinia. Overnight came the orders to get out. Evacuation and
re-occupation were well-nigh simultaneous. The school split three
ways: Gurutalawa, Kandy and Milagiriya. Kandy had but improvised
class accommodation, and Gurutalawa was barely an open camp.
Hardships were suffered and endured with a spirit that challenges
description; "S. Thomas' went on separated but not divided. Three
dimensional!
Cricket went on too, and the Royal-Thomian
match. The series suffered no break. Of course. Royal had suffered
too, as did other schools but not to the extent that a boarding
school like S. Thomas' did.
The- school carried on, not exactly
flourishing, but efficiently. The match was the thing, and George
Ponniah from Milagiriya contrived to beat Royal not once, but twice
in those impossible years. How he achieved this remains also a small
miracle. So let this serve as tribute to him and the lads of the
school who stood by and did her proud. We salute them.
Today, Royalists and Thomians rejoice together
in a proud, noble series, that has not only stood the demands of
time, but continues to show the way: that the spirit of cricket
engendered by Its founders is not dead: that the Royal-Thomian
stands for and upholds the best in a game that is the best of all
games. That that spirit lives, having died and disappeared
everywhere else. It is the country's most interesting and worthwhile
episode each recurring year.
The whole game Is In many ways unique. It has
made an impression upon thousands who have never had the good
fortune of a cricket education by the salubrious, salt shores of Mt.
Lavinia or the soft green fields of Reid Avenue. "These memorable
matches, one feels, are less disturbed than all others by the
evolution of the ultra modern game - from a past time, a "way of
life," to a spectacle largely governed by considerations of commerce
and self-aggrandisement." So A. E. Knight once said of the
Eton-Harrow game, many years ago.
Many years ago, I think it was during the
sixtieth game in the series - in 1939 to be exact, JANUS of the
Ceylon Daily News wrote "The Royalists took the field as if the
world belonged to them. The Thomians, as if they didn't care to whom
it belonged!" They play, however, as they ha\e always done, in the
grand old way, skill matched against skill, individual and
collective, no quarter asked, none given: honour the supreme
consideration. No better training ground for welding character and
ever-lasting friendship, here and in^the hereafter.
We now celebrate jointly a hundred years of
Royal-Thomian cricket: but it is all in the memory, and in souvenirs
and magazines. There is a historical record too, of facts and cold
figures. But what have we that is tangible and warm: One remembers
at once the NINE RUNS MATCH. What of it? Is there one vestige of
material evidence of some or any of the implements, or things that
were used in that historic, controversial game? A bat, for instance,
a ball, a wicket: a pair of boots or pads carefully stored away and
handed down as family heirloom? I, for one, shall not be surprised
if in some corner of a well-loved room, hidden reverently away from
inquisitive, cynical eye there lies some relic once used by a
legendary hero. That first inaugural match of 1879; is there
something left that was used in that game where staff and boys
played? Where is the bat that first scored fifty, the first hundred?
Where is the ball that first took a hat-trick?
Twice has it been done, the hat-trick. Is It
too much to think, Eddie, that that ball has not been preserved, and
is in your keeping: suitably mounted, perhaps. There must be a host
of such mementos of memorable match or heroic achievement.
The bats that scored a hundred. The bats that
scored hundreds in successive years. Neil Joseph's and Duleep
Mendis'; Barney Gunasekara's bat and Mervyn Gooneratne's. Whose
centuries in 1926 and 1936 were followed by superlative winning
bowling performances. Norman Siebel's and Ronnie Reid's who both
allegedly caught out first ball, went on to make record scores.
Billy Porritt bowled both right and left-handed, and when Alex
Wijesinha scored his hundred in 1934 and looked like winning the
match, it was the fielders' appeal against the light that stopped
play!
But where are those weapons of war. Let us look
for them and see what we can find. I had a bat, alas! lost forever
in movement from Colombo to Kandy. That bat was used in one
Royal-Thomian match by three Royalists and one Thomian: first by
Ivers Gunasekara and finally by me. It won the match and I kept it,
with the owner's approval: It belonged to Dudley Senanayake. In that
same match a cricket ball became famous for all time. Ask Harry
Gunasekara - I have it, autographed by all the Thomian team. We
hadn't then the heart to ask Harry to autograph it. Perhaps he may
oblige now.
There is a Centenary Carnival on. Could It not
be the starting point for a Royal-Thomian cricket museum? Let every
Royalist and Thomian who has anything whatsoever connected with
Royal-Thomian cricket offer it up today - the nucleus of
Royal-Thomian Cricketana - a collection that can be shared and
enjoyed by many rather than remain stored selfishly away and out of
sight and to all intents and purposes, forgotten.
In this collection may be embodied all the
literature that belongs to the series - scorebooks, magazines,
souvenirs, etc. S. P. Foenander brought out his "Three Score and
Ten" in the late forties: S. S. Perera later continued from where
SPF left off. Photographs, Family Albums, Records of Fathers and
Sons, Brothers in the same and in opposing teams, and surely the
most unique achievement of all - the only player to represent both
teams: in different years, of course. Not even Dickie de Zoysa could
contrive that in one year and the same!
It will make a memorable collection, and can be
on display each/ear when the match comes round.
Well, that is my suggestion, for what it is
worth. And three days. At last! It was a suggestion we in S. Thomas'
espoused way back in the fifties, in the time of Canon de Saram.
Unfortunately, it was felt at the time that three days cricket
would prove too severe a strain on young nerves, even though it
would be only in this one match.
Now that in Centenary Year, the 3-day idea has
been accepted, should it not become a regular feature? Let Royal and
S. Thomas' show the way.
May the game this year be a happy one - as
happy as it is historic, and may the better side win, watched
benevolently, I would like to believe, by the countless ones who
participated in the passing cavalcade of a hundred matches. Having
accepted the scorers and the Great Umpire's verdict, . they will
merely watch, and perhaps cheer, to the background interruptions of
angelic Mustang voices.
"Esto Perpetua Disce Aut Discede"
Bertie Wijesinha
