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| Wednesday, 17 March 2004 |
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Three splendid centuries at the Kingswood - Dharmaraja encounters in 1951 and 1952 by Herbert Jayasuriya I joined Kingswood College on February 4, 1951. In fact I recollect that day, my father accompanied my younger brother Bertram and me to Kingswood. We went by bus to Kandy having made arrangements to keep our two trunk boxes on the hood rack of the bus when boarding it at Kadawatha. On that day my brother and I were informed that we were to be boarded at the Kingswood Junior Hostel at Ferns. My father took both of us and left us at Ferns. This hostel was located in the beautiful village of Urawala overlooking the Augusta Hill Estate and the majestic Hantana Hills. The hostellers of Ferns were daily transported to and fro Kingswood which was about 2 miles away in a bus. Thus commenced my career at Kingswood which I always regard as "God's own school". One of the special events in the sporting calendar of our school was the cricket match we played against Dharmaraja College. I might go on to state that this was the most special sporting event in our school calendar. During the early 1950s this match was played either at Randles Hill or at Lake View which was the name given to the Dharmaraja College grounds. In 1951 this match was played at Lake Veiw. The Kingswood team was captained by the college Senior Prefect, Shelton Perera. He was a tall, well built handsome lad, who was a stylish left hand batsman. His deputy was a short stocky lad named Mahinda de Silva. We also had a player by the name of Brindly Duhullewa who was an excellent fast bowler and a very good batsman. As far as I remember some of the other members of this team were T.S. Adahan, Sumith Gunawardena, Prema Peiris, Asoka Perera and Bernard Samarajeewa. Reverting to the match in 1951 Kingswood won the toss and batted first. Kingswood was given a great start by their opening pair, Mahinda de Silva and Duhullewa, if I remember correct they put on more than 100 runs. The feature of the first day's play was the brilliant century scored by Mahinda de Silva. I think he scored about 133 runs. During this innings he drove forcefully on the off and the on sides. He square cut several balls to the boundary and he also scored several sixes on the on side. His innings gave us great pleasure and was a delight to watch. The most amazing thing in Mahinda was although he was stockily built his foot work was very graceful. Mahinda was able to dance up to the ball and stroke it beautifully to all corners of the field. This was one of the best innings I had watched in school cricket. Mahinda's century helped Kingswood to score over 300 runs. I also recall that Brindly Duhullewa scored about 65 runs and Shelton Perera scored 65 runs not out. Shelton declared the Kingswood innings just after tea on the first day. We were able to beat Dharmaraja in this match by an innings. In 1952 the Kingswood-Dharmaraja match was played at Randles Hill. The Kingswood team was captained by T.S. Adahan whilst Dharmaraja was led by Randeniya. I recollect Dharmaraja won the toss and batted first and put up a massive total of about 347 runs. The back bone of the Dharmaraja innings centered round the brilliant century scored by Chandra de Silva, a very elegant right hand batsman. I recollect Chandra de Silva was a tall, handsome, young lad who resembled a Hollywood movie star. In his innings he played some very pleasing strokes such as on drives, off drives, cuts and pulls. Chandra's innings was the finest innings I had witnessed played by a Rajan. When it came for the Kingswoodians to bat I was privileged to see the best school boy innings that I ever witnessed. This was the innings of Asoka Perera, the Kingswood wicket keeper and vice captain. Asoka was a left hand batsman and on this day he walked to the wicket with a great deal of confidence. He did not give a single chance till he made a score of 148. He batted extremely gracefully. His off drives and his on drives were a pleasure to watch. Apart from these strokes he cut, he hooked and pulled the ball at will. The most outstanding feature of Asoka's innings was that he timed his strokes perfectly and he was able to hit the ball on the middle of the bat. It was a real privilege to witness Asoka batting in full cry. Asoka as a prefect in school was a strict disciplinarian. There were some senior boys who did not like him and gave him the nick name "Napolean". Of course, on this day Asoka played this innings full of discipline like Nepolean. Kingswood made a score of over 300 but felt short by a few runs to pass the Dharmaraja total. This match ended in a draw. The three centurions mentioned in this article ended up their lives after leaving school in this manner. Mahinda de Silva joined the Lake House for sometime and subsequently the Government Medical Stores. I do not know what Chandra de Silva did after leaving school, but I had information that he was engaged in some sales work. Asoka Perera joined the Bank of Ceylon and played cricket for the bank and also for the Bloomfield Cricket Club. Asoka ended up as a very popular Senior Manager at the Bank. Apart from the cricket the Kingswood-Dharmaraja encounter in the 1950s was a jollyfull occasion. There were several cheering groups of both schools singing and dancing during this big match. The cheering parties at these matches were led by formidable schoolboys such as Eabert Perera, Aron Herath, Lesley Abeysekera, Roy de Silva and Sockkalingam. Kingswoodians had specially composed two songs for this big match. The first song was in Sinhala and the first line of the song was "Ho, HO, HO, HO Dharmaraja Walas Thoppiya" which was sung to a tune like a chant and the other song was sung in English and its opening line was "Hang all the Rajans on the Kottamba Tree". This was sung to the tune of John Brown's "Body lies mouldering in the Grave". The Rajans sang a Lovely Sinhalese song to a baila tune. The opening line of this song was "Ayyai Mamai Akurata Yana Welawe". As mentioned by me in an article written last year I had the privilege of scoring the winning runs for Kingswood in 1958. This was the last occasion that Kingswood won this match and I hope this year Kingswood will break this hoodoo and win this match. The last occasion I witnessed this match was in about 1994 when I was asked to be the Chief Guest at this match. On that occasion I went to Kandy accompanied by my team mate Clifford Rathnavibhushana. This match is to be played this year on the 26 and 27 of this month and I hope to visit Kandy in the company of Clifford to witness this match. Therefore, I thought of writing this article to revive old memories. |
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