THE ORIGIN OF ROYAL THOMIAN BY THE
COMPILERS
We are fortunate In having accounts of the
Origin of the Match by C. E. Corea who played for The Colombo
Academy, as Royal College was then known, just four years later
in 1882, another from a contemporary newspaper and yet another
in Keble's "History of S. Thomas' College." It is interesting to
find that Mr. Ashley Walker, the Assistant Principal of the
Colombo Academy, a Cambridge Blue was responsible for initiating
the series of annual encounters between the two schools. His
idea was readily accepted by his counterpart at S. Thomas',
Reverend T. F. Falkner, also a Cambridge Blue, the Sub-Warden at
the time. What gave the game a good auspices and a great fillip
was that these two gentlemen and members of the staff of the two
schools actually played in the rival teams; Mr. F. Stephens
himself a Cambridge man one of the finest coaches S. Thomas'
College has had, continued to live in the school and supervise
the cricket even after he had left the staff and joined a
mercantile firm. He was a member of the C.C.C. and played in
many European Teams that represented Ceylon overseas. Reverend
Moyrick another member of the staff played for S. Thomas' while
Mr. A. Campbell of the staff of the Academy played for the
Academy. Mr. Walker's object in introducing inter-Collegiate
matches was to establish true sportsmanship which sprang from
"the public school spirit." How well he has succeeded can now be
seen in the bond of the healthy rivalry and mutual regard that
this fine spirit has engendered. In 1878 the first match was
played on the Slave Island Green, the players going across the
Beira Lake in canoes with their cricket gear and luncheon
baskets. Both innings were over in a single afternoon and the
result has not been recorded.
"In 1879 the match was played on the C.C.C.
grounds which was then on the Galle Face" says Keble quoting from an
account in the History of the Royal College (1931). "The members of
the team arrived either on foot or by hackery, or were ferried
across the Beira Lake. The School was not given even a period off to
see the match. There were no School colours prominently displayed,
no flags were waved, and there were no lower school boys shrieking
with delight, and lastly no old boys making the queerest antics in
appreciation of the play and recalling the old Incidents and
relating their thrills to their admiring sons, nephews and
grandchildren.
The scoring on both sides was slow and low:
every hit had to be run for to the full, as boundaries were not in
vogue then. The Academy team eventually won as a result chiefly of
good fielding."
In 1880 the first match in which only the boys
took part was played on the old Galle Face green. This is the
starting point of the Centenary series and as such our score cards
commence with this year.
In later years the Principal and the Warden or
members of the staff of the rival Institutions used to act as
Umpires; so keen was their interest in the game.
Elsewhere in this Book is a photograph of the teams with Lewis
Walker and Warden Stone as Umpires. Boys of that vintage have
written that these Umpires in their desire to maintain the highest
standards often gave decisions against their own schools if there
was the slightest doubt. This certainly did not satisfy the boys tho'
it did not diminish their respect for their Umpires.
Later still famous coloursmen of the two
schools like D. L. de Saram, Frank Ondatjie, M. Saravanamuttu, C. W.
Van Geyzel acted as Umpires. Even this was improved upon to remove
any taint of partisanship, by appointing Umpires from the Umpires'
Association. This is what prevails today.
