Re-opening of Isipathana playground on February 19

Ranjeeva Seneviratne

The ceremonial re-opening of the Isipathana College, Colombo’s playground will take place on February 19, 2008 at 8 a.m. at the school premises.

The re-developed ground will be a boon to the school’s sportsmen who will be able to take part in athletics, football, hockey and junior rugby at the school ground.

Isipathana has been in the forefront of schools rugby for over two decades and ruggerites of all age groups will be able to practice at the ground. Isipathana has already provided the Sri Lanka rugby team with 47 ruggerites since 1970 including five Sri Lanka Captains - Nalin de Silva (1980), Hisham Abdeen (1988), Sudath Sampath (1993 - Sevens), Viraj Prasantha (1998) and Sajith Mallikarachchi (2005 and 2006). Last year too they had an excellent season emerging runners up in the Milo League and President’s Trophy Tournaments while the juniors made a clean sweep by winning all the under 18, 16, 14 and 12 tournaments.

The school has also produced several outstanding cricketers of the calibre of Jayantha Paranathala, Ashantha de Mel, Asoka de Silva, Uvais Karnain, Nuwan Soysa, Suresh Perera and Sri Lanka’s youngest Test Cricketer Sanjeewa Weerasinghe who brought honour and fame to the country while hockey players of the calibre of Mervyn Preena, Otto Preena, S.H.M. Kuthubdeen, S.H.M. Hallaj, S.H.U. Karnain and Indika Prasanna have done the school proud with their deeds for Sri Lanka on the hockey field while Cassim Wahab, Abdul Satter and Bri Ponnambalam (motor racing), K.H. Jayasiri and Sudath Karunaratne (basketball), Sujith Hemantha and Manjula Sirisena (soccer), table tennis champions Indika Prasad and Ashok Melvani and former body building champion Tilak Jayaweera are some of the other sportsmen who have gone onto represent Sri Lanka.

The school ground was ceremonially opened on January 22, 1969 during the stewardship of Colonel G.W. Rajapakse with the expenses being borne by Mudaliyar L.L.D. Abeysekera but it lacked the requirements to play first XV school rugby matches.

The ground has been re-developed at a cost of Rs. 5.5 million helped by a generous donation by Major Nissanka Senadhipathy, Chairman of the Avant Garde security services with the balance money being provided by the School Development Society and Ven. Uduwe Dhammaloka Thera.

The school authorities will also make an appeal to President Mahinda Rajapaksa to allow the school to play their first XV rugby matches at Pedris Stadium, Havelock Town which has a crowd capacity of 8,000 and could provide maximum security to the spectators and players. Several ‘A’ Division club League rugby matches and school matches were played at Pedris Stadium - including the Trinity-Isipathana and Royal-Isipathana matches during the period 1988 to 1990 but during the last 15 years rugby has not been played at the venue.