Sebastianite Sumithra Fernando was a cricketer par excellence

Dilwin Mendis - Moratuwa sports correspondent

St Sebastian's College Moratuwa one of the Prestigious educational institutions in the island has produced men of great calibre. In the field of sports too their contribution to our motherland is immense.

One such sportsman who comes to my mind is Sumithra Fernando who was a very fine all round sportsmen in his hey day. His two elder brothers Sirimal and Priyantha too falls into the same category. They lived in Uyana in very close proximity to the college and most of the time they spent their young days at the college grounds.

Sumithra is one of the finest cricketers produced by St Sebastian's. He was an opening batsman and a wicket keeper. He excelled in Football, Athletics, Basketball and won college colours. He too was a Sergeant of the Cadet contingent.

He commenced his cricket career under Rev Brother Patrick who is a strick disciplinarian. Seeing his talents the coach immediately asked him to open and to keep wickets. He was selected for the under 14 team at the age of ten. Then he went on to play for under 16 and first eleven and during this period his coach was Ernie Dias. When he was just fifteen he was taken to the first eleven cricket pool and was the reserve wicket keeper in 1959/60 season.

In the year 1961 whilst captaining the under 16 team he played under Fermin Fernnado and opened batting and he was the Gloveman. His elder broker Priyantha was also in the team and he went on to captain in 1962 and won the Big Match for Sebastianite's for the first time – since the series commenced in 1933 against their arch rivals Cambrians.

In 1962 when Priyantha was leading Sumithra kept wickets and opened batting. In 1963 when Ian Barthelot led the side Sumithra was the vice captain and performed the same task. It was his peak year 1964 and during this period his name was a house hold one among cricket crazy Moratuwites. Sumithra was in full swing and collected more than eight hundred runs including a scintillating 118 runs in the Big Match. In addition he was representing Catamarans Sports Club in the Sara Trophy tournament too.

In 1964 he was the unanimous choice for the schoolboy cricketer of the year Award and due to unforeseen reasons unfortunately the authorities manipulated another trophy as outstation schoolboy cricketer of the year and he was awarded that trophy. Due to this Moratu Vidyalaya too fell into this category and though they play first division cricket still they come under this category.

These three brothers Sirimal, Priyantha and Sumithra has captained their alma-mater in under 14, 16 and first eleven teams and this is a record in the Sri Lanka schools cricket history that three brothers leading their school in all age groups.

After a very successful sports career especially in cricket Sumithra joined the Bank of Ceylon in 1965. With the hope that one day he will add one more feather to his cap representing his motherland - then Ceylon. All these hopes were shattered and went to pieces when he was posted to Matara.

At that time there were no tournament cricket at Matara and he represented his old club Catamarans and only in the week ends he travelled to Moratuwa. There is an old saying “Practice makes Perfect”. Sumithra played cricket without a single day's practice.

But he represented Bank of Ceylon throughout his career and during this period they were playing in the Government services ‘A’ Division Tournament and he was the unanimous choice to open and keep wickets. Later Bank of Ceylon played in the Nationalized Services ‘A’ Division.

His first captain in the Bank was Hugh Gunasekera and the other team mates were Premasara Epasinghe, Asoka Perera, W D L Fonseka, Rex Silva, U L S de Silva S. Ilangarathram, K D C Perera, Jayantha Udukumbura, Tissa Basnayake, Jayarathna Weerasinghe to name a few.