|
MAHENDRA'S CRICKET PAGE
Cricket
is a great game. Once bitten you are an addict for life. To the outsider cricket can make little sense.
My father's American friends once said to me " How can you take
seriously a game that goes for five days without any guarantee
of a result ? " A cricketer fan would say that it is like relationships, sometimes
you walk away and there's no winner and no loser.
As a six years old kid I used to play soft ball
cricket with my neighbors. They
were about my age and were very keen cricketers. Three of us played
endless matches almost every day. That's where I first started
to play cricket. My father
decided to send me to Wesley because he was an old boy there and
so were his three (out of four) brothers. Except my father, all
three brothers played 1st XI cricket for Wesley. Strangely, I
learnt to play cricket thanks to kids of the neighborhood not
any one of my uncles. They hardly ever spoke about cricket let
alone influencing me to play.
When I look back, what a great
time I had at Wesley. I'm glad that I didn't spend 12 years of
my life inside a 6000 student educational institutions where
talented (some of them imported from other schools) were given
opportunities and not so talented were totally neglected.
At Wesley it was a different education and we were part of one
big family.
I first played under 12 cricket for
Wesley in 1976. My first game was against D.S.S College. I
remember us loosing the game by few runs and a hard hitting
batsman scored 50 runs for the opposition who was finally out
bowled around the legs by Sanjeev Ganarajah. The batsman was none
other than Aravinda De Sliva. Until I left school in 1986 I
represented and led Wesley cricket teams in all age groups.
In 1985 Wesley team was chosen as
the best in Sri Lanka and I had my best ever season. We were the
first Wesley team to be chosen as the champions since Sri
Lanka gained test status. I believe that the
standard of school cricket in 1984 and 1985 were higher than any
other period in our country's cricket history. To give you an
idea, seven players of the world cup winning Sri Lanka cricket team represented their respective schools in those two
years. The list includes Aravind De Silva, Roshan Mahanama, Asanka Gurusinghe
and Hashan Tillakaratne. I was fortunate that I left school cricket
scene on a high thanks to a bunch of very talented and
highly motivated cricketers.
| 
