Jagath - Chief Guest for 'Bradby'

Ravi LADDUWAHETTY

Legendary Royal College Rugby and Cricket Captain and former CR and FC and Sri Lanka Flyhalf Jagath Fernando will be the Chief Guest at the second leg of the Bradby Shield at the Royal College Stadium on Saturday.

Rugby historians will reminisce Fernando's Royal College Rugger team of 1970 which played against S.P. ( Seevali) Samarasekera's Trinitians at Nittawela on July 2, 1970 which was dubbed as " death of a hoodoo and the most memorable Bradby of all" where Royal leading 12-0 with 45 minutes of the match over, but lost to Trinity 12-16 at the long whistle. Royal, till that year, had never lost a single Bradby Shield encounter at Nittawela.

The year 1970 could be distilled into the one match which was the second leg of the Bradby, where Trinity skipper Seevali Samarasekera rose to immortality with his individual brilliance despite the match being marred by a bout of fisticuffs in the middle when Seevali reciprocated a punch from Fernando who could not beat the harassing tackles which Samarasekera unleashed on him.

The match was originally scheduled to be played at the Peradeniya University grounds but a threat by anti-social elements to disrupt the game, resulted in the change of the venue. Royal, drubbed by a massive 19-3 defeat at Longden Place a fortnight earlier, had put that bitter past behind them and were in shades of brilliance with Fernando revealing his amazing skills as a fly half.

Jagath who was also Royal College cricket captain of 1971, was associated with four Royal Thomian batting records that year where he had the highest individual score for a batsman in the series of 160 not out till then, the first batsman in the series to score a century before lunch, the then record for the highest partnership for the second wicket of 185 runs he had with number three batsman Gajan Pathmanathan (97) and also the batsman who had the highest aggregate in a Royal- Thomian match until that year of 203 (160 and 43 After leaving Royal, he joined the CR and FC and turned out for the Club till 1974. He also played for Sri Lanka as a centre and fly half with distinction from 1971 to 1973.