How Gerry got 'Satha' out

The article 'To Sir, with love' with the above headline which appeared in the Daily News by Premasara Epasinghe on Saturday who was a pupil of Gerry Gooneratne was well received by the numerous readers of this newspaper and the flood of telephone calls we received confirmed this.

Due to lack of space the paragraphs where Epasinghe described the shrewd captaincy of Gooneratne and how he set a trap to dismiss the great Mahadevan Sathasivam when Tamil Union played the Saracens at Rifle Green was deleted.

It went like this: Sathasivam was batting at his peak and the one problem Gooneratne faced was as to how he was going to dismiss this once in a life time batsman.

After wracking his brains Gooneratne settled for that off spinning sensation of that time OLD Nalandian also a pupil of Gooneratne Mahinda Athulathmudali to put his plan of dismissing Sathasivam into action.

Gooneratne told Athulathmudali: "Putha as you know, Satha plays the late cut the best in the world and we will lure him into playing that stroke and get him out."

"Give him three balls short of length outside the off stump and let him hit you for fours. The fourth one flight it up a little more and then let's see what happens."

Sathasivam played the late cut too early and the ball that seemed to be whistling past Gooneratne in the gully saw a blinder of a catch by Gooneratne who was waiting like a hawk in the gully and that was the end of Sathasivam.

It was a simple plan ekak and it was a disconsolate Sathasivam who was seen waling back into the pavilion. Athulathmudali would certainly have played for Sri Lanka had be not domiciled in Canada.