Good bye Tony!

End of the world
Coming belatedly though
ls not a fallacy; it has come,
With all its misery,
gloom and wretchedness.
Riding on the crest of a name currently,
Sri Lankan Cricket may lune
perhaps forgotten that
The very same waves on which it sits now
Were violent, turbulent and unwieldy
years ago in 1995,
causing almost ship wrecks.
Waves of malice, vengeance
and injustice
Roughened the cricketing ocean
then (i.e. sea of cricket in Australia)
And made it virtually unsuitable,
Almost forcing the inexperienced
and naive Sri Lankans
To wreck themselves in retaliation.
Yet the wise counsel and the
timely intervention
Of a veteran sea-farer - a White Captain,
‘Hailing paradoxically
from once notorious South Africa,
Rescued the ‘Black-skinned’
Sri Lankans from the disaster
He was none other than you:
“Tony” “Tony Greig“
Tony, are you still alive?
And is the world still beautiful?
And, are my fears only hallucinatory?
How ecstatic would it be to hear you say “Yes”
But facts are not ecstatic,
Nor are they soothing;
They are jarring grating and pitiless:
YOU ARE GONE !
The friend, the counsel,
the well-wisher of Sri Lanka
Most of all the best representative
of Cricket: “The perfect gentleman”
Needless to say the world is crumbling.
(It was destined to crumble on the
21th of December)
Your demise is heart breaking,
yet there is one consolation
The touch-stone of integrity and honesty !
Fearless campaigner
of fair play and justice !
Benefactor of the needy
and the down trodden
You were in essence a Good Samaritan
God will, no doubt,
beckon you to his kingdom.
With open arms in satisfaction
Good bye Tony !
May god bless you !

Suwandaratna (Lib. Science) Faculty of Social Science
University of Kelaniya