Taken
from the book - Into the passionate Soul of sub-continental
cricket.
by Emma Levine -
If I were to
be asked what I thought was the best example of audience
participation in sports, it would be a close-run finish between
a Calcutta Test match (an occasion I had the pleasure of
witnessing in 1993, and provided the nearest feeling to a
religious experience 1 have had) and school cricket in Sri
Lanka.
Two years ago I had the good fortune to learn of the unique and
mad world of the Royal-Thomian (the most notorious and best
known match in the country) and during England's tour of Sri
Lanka I broke off from their Test match to go and see it. It was
beyond my wildest expectations, and I made sure that the next
time I went I would be better prepared for it. It was one of the
highlights when I returned for a grand tour of Sri Lanka's end
of year big matches. It was a tour that took me to many of the
school matches, which were usually between rival colleges
placing a highly competitive and celebrated two- or three-day
match. My first taste of these matches was at the Royal Thomian,
which is the most famous cricket match in the country. For this
reason it is also the match responsible for the greatest number
of hangovers that a cricket match could ever be responsible for!
This is because the whole occasion is one great drunken
tradition. This should have come as no surprise, as the very
nature of cricket is conducive to tradition, whichever country
it is played in.
However, for
me its ambience had been more in the nature of a genteel
summer's afternoon relaxation, nibbling on cucumber sandwiches
and sipping warm beer, with a polite round of applause to mark a
rather splendid boundary, and an embarrassed silence to
accompany the batsmen back to the pavilion after they were out
first ball. Or maybe I was being too English.
In Sri Lanka, tradition demanded that the annual matches be
enjoyed in the form of riotous celebration. School cricket, I
learned extremely quickly, was a different kind of sporting
experience in this country, one which bore no relation at all to
the game in the land of its origin. The main way of integrating
oneself into the melee was to unashamedly consume as much
alcohol as possible, and preferably a mix of arrack (a potent
spirit made from palm toddy and positively addictive with ginger
ale), vodka, beer and whisky. Start in the late morning as the
first ball is being delivered and progress throughout the day,
increasing meanwhile the vocal support, dancing, and frequency
of pitch invasions. It is difficult to explain the phenomenon of
a match like the Royal Thomian.
This annual
three-day match is played by two of the premier institutions in
Colombo: Royal and St Thomas' colleges. It has the significance
of being the second longest continuous school's cricket match in
the world, and is beaten only by an annual Adelaide college
match which bowled its first delivery in 1878. That is between
Prince Alfred's-where the Chappell brothers were educated-and St
Peter's. The Eton-Harrow encounter, which is the only schools
event remotely comparable in England, was interrupted during
World War I. There is something absurdly incongruous about the
main reason for these celebrations. After all, the reason for
the Royal Thomian match is to celebrate the rivalry between the
two most respected and prestigious schools in the country, and
yet the behaviour displayed by most of the crowd is anything but
respectable. But there is much more to the event than the
cricket.
The match is
really a vehicle for an annual reunion and celebration where all
ages of people, from 20 to 95, can act like schoolboys again.
People return year after year to see the match, and I spoke to
many ex-pupils who now living overseas, make it a great excuse
to come back to visit. As with most cricket scenes in the
subcontinent, this one was a male-dominated affair, which, as
many spectators would defend, is the charm to it. Female
spectators were so few that it was difficult to spot them. Many
of the young women I spoke to said that it would be easy to be
discouraged by the 'eve-teasing'. They were referring to the
male spectators' desire to taunt them unmercifully whenever the
women came into their vicinity. However, attempts to overcome
such ungentlemanly behaviour were emphasised in the match
programme produced by St. Thomas by stating rather nobly,
'Ladies, we Thomians appreciate your presence as you add colour
to the game and it should be known that the Thomians deserve
your cheering since it was our effort that disproved the
Royalists' statement "Cricket should be an all male affair". My
sentiments exactly.
Even the
most prestigious gathering of the Sri Lankan elite (MPs, company
directors, lawyers and what were considered to be 'respectable
professionals') revealed their true souls to be nothing more
than that of a rumbustious schoolboys. There was a constant
background of music coming from small brass bands playing funky
tunes that got everyone on their feet. Most of the chairs were
discarded as people danced in the aisles, swigging out of
bottles and spilling food down their shirts as the sweat poured
down their faces. The people I felt the most sympathy for were
the food and drink sellers, who, in spite of the congestion of
the stands, had to spend the entire day winding their way
through the throng, precariously balancing crates of soft-drinks
bottles on their heads, or trays of sandwiches and snacks. It
was not a job I would have undertaken.
And the match? There was indeed a cricket match going 'on for
three days which actually received some attention and
appreciation for the players' sporting abilities. In fact the
players on the pitch were probably the only sober people in the
ground, and took the game seriously. Many international players
started their cricket careers from this match, and the
schoolboys knew that it could be their chance of glory in front
of the biggest sporting crowd in the country. However, looking
at the results over the last few decades, most of the games have
ended in a draw. This may be because of the higher level of the
game, or else because each side is being more defensive, playing
to avoid losing rather than to win. It was surprising to see
people fiercely defending the honour of their old schools, even
after leaving some ten, twenty or fifty years earlier. The fans
were actually segregated, although this was not so much to
prevent trouble as to give a little more unity to the supporting
groups. The strong sentiments behind the theory of the 'old
school tie', that most English of concepts, were expressed with
relish, and allegiances still remained loyal and true. The
stadium-which was filled with an amazing
15,OOO people on the final day-was awash with flags of blue and
gold for Royal College, and blue and black for St Thomas'
(giving the other known name for the encounter, 'Battle of the
Blues').
I wandered
around the boundary and sampled the music being played by the
bands. The best way of enjoying that was undoubtedly to join the
assembled ranks on chairs, on benches and on walls-and dance.
Discarding the camera bag in a safe place, I joined the
revellers and we partied continuously, which of course delighted
everyone since I was entering into the swing of things. I had to
reluctantly avoid the plentiful and insistent offers of vodka,
arrack, and in fact most varieties of alcohol that came from all
directions. It was tempting to accept, but there was no way I
would be able to focus the camera adequately after a few drinks,
especially in such overbearing heat. Still, as the adage goes,
you don't need alcohol to have a good time-and I was certainly
enjoying every second.
A cricketing
fiesta such as this is my idea of nirvana, and it seems to me
that the Sri Lankans have combined play with pleasure to
perfection. For that they have my deepest respect. I just wish
that they could teach the 'old dog' a trick or two and bring a
little more partying into the staid English scene.
I joined the
prestigious and exclusive Mustangs tent, which is a members-only
club consisting of the higher echelons of Sri Lankan society. It
is a traditional male-only enclave, and special permission had
to be obtained from the Tent Secretary. That decision received
some highly disapproving looks, and remarks such as 'If we let
her come in, they'll all want to'. The members were as bucolic
as the rest of the crowd. I danced with a distinguished company
director to a Latin American tune, and my sobriety was
definitely more conducive to keeping my feet than his swaying
efforts to remain vertical. He confided that he had given his 16
-year-old son, a pupil of Royal College, strict instructions to
'get drunk, tease the girls and behave badly'. "Why do you
encourage your son to do that?" I asked with surprise as he
attempted to swing me round. He gave a long and hearty chuckle.
"Because I did when I was his age!" he replied. (Although not
much had changed as far as his behaviour was concerned.) It
seemed that fathers passed on more by way of tradition than
simply sending sons to their old schools-and the bad behaviour
was a compulsory custom!
The national
press reported the match with relish and every newspaper devoted
its back pages to it, usually demoting an international match to
the inside pages. The Press Box was filled with most of
Colombo's sporting journalists, and they followed every ball
closer than anyone in the stadium. One of the journalists told
me that no ex-pupil from either college is allowed to report on
the match for his paper, in case emotions run too high and the
match account becomes too biased.
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