Death of a Trinity Double Lion
Sharm de Alwis
PERSONALITIES: Lionel Wadsworth died last night (Sunday) in London
from a terminal illness he bore heroically.
Lala as he was known to all and sundry was a sportsman of the first
drawer. He first played as a fifteen year old fledgling in A. P.
Fernando's crack cricket team of 1945 which had in the ranks the
redoubtable C. N. 'Pittu' Schokman, Asoka Yatawara. Asoka Imbuldeniya,
S. B. Pilapitiya, Frank Sirimanne, Mervyn Wanduragala and Hugh Molegoda.
As a callow youth in this Herculean company he shared with his left arm
spin 5 wickets for 47 Vs Wesley.
He won his Colours in '46 and went on to captain the team in '48 and
'49 in which year he was awarded the cricket Lion for sheer brilliance.
In his first year of captaincy he scored 55 runs against Wesley and
although there were some sterling cameo knocks it is the only one over
the half-century mark. Lakshman Jayakody. Jim Bandaranayake, Michael
Schokman, Eustace Rulach and Percy Deheragoda are his surviving team
mates.
His other big hauls make impressive reading:-
1947 5 for 34 Vs SJC, 5 for 08 Vs SACK, '48/5 for 70 Vs STC, '49/5
for 30 Vs Wesley, 6 for 52 Vs Royal, 5 for 73 Vs Royal, 5 for 90 Vs STC,
5 for 37 Vs SACK.
In his final year he fared exceptionally well against all the schools
with whom Trinity had fixtures and was awarded the Bowling prize as
another feather in his cap.
As an eighteen year old in 1948 he had the distinction of captaining
Combined Colleges Vs West Indies as well as playing for All-Ceylon
against the same visitors.
But Lala had not done with soldiering. He took to rugger. He won his
straight Lion, having been awarded Colours in the same year. His fellow
Lions were K. Arumugam and C. J. Senanayake. The boys who as an
unfledged fifteen year old would have thought with Robert Frost that he
had "miles to go and promises to keep" honoured all his whims and
fancies.
I wrote to him only last month bidding him to keep his courage with
positive thinking but when you have to go, you have to go. That is the
eternal dogma. But I am sure that like. Francis Bacon, Lala would have
in his final moments thought upon death and would have found it "the
least of all evils."
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