Down Memory Lane

The schools cricket season of 1954 was a memorable one for St Anthony’s College, Katugastota.   That was the year Antonians became the Unofficial Schools Cricket Champions” and also two of their favourite sons carved their names in the cricketing annals. I went in search of that invincible season and …

  By Mahinda Wijesinghe         Eustace Lorenz Pereira could quite easily be regarded as the most outstanding sportsman produced in the 180-year-old history of Royal College, Colombo, an academic institution that can trace its beginnings way back to 1835.  As the college song goes “and thence did …

Duncan  was a record beater in every sense of the word By Ken de Joodt Unforgettable ! That’s what it was – some of the most incredible achievements in Sri Lanka and world athletics that took place more than 67 years ago. Little-known Sri Lanka was then famously known for Ceylon Tea and was one of …

Although some unofficial rugby games had been played by S. Thomas’ College, Mt. Lavinia, under the team name of Thomian “Tigers” in the early 1950s, the first official inter-school rugby match between Trinity College, Kandy, and the Thomians was played on June 25, 1955,  at Longdon Place, Colombo 7. What S. Thomas’ College achieved in 1955, now shows …

They do not fly, they do not sting and they don’t have a queen or a king. They have a history as long as their rugby pedigree can be traced.   ornets are a type of insect, also called wasps, that gather and live in colonies, and they sting. We find many varieties of them in Sri Lanka, notoriously at Sigiriya. They are often …

From the 3rd edition of Quadrangle, published in 2015. It was such a joy and honour to meet up with an active living legend, Summa Navaratnam, at the Royal College Sports Complex in Colombo recently. Still brisk and bright and actively involved in a Junior Rugby Academy he set up at Royal. …

It must be a unique experience for a writer to meet two eminent persons at the same interview and when it is two brothers it really must be special. Well, at least that was how I felt when I met Nihal Amerasinghe and his brother Franklyn who are both well …

LP steered St. Benedict’s College to became the ‘Unofficial Champions’ something St. Benedict’s couldn’t achieve almost for four decades since the early 20th century.   Inspired by legendary individuals, sports teams of yesteryears and their mavericks, I ventured into those golden years in search of the ones who excelled in …

When one interviews an eminent literary personage, the interviewer has to pay attention to how he conducts the interview as the interviewee himself would have conducted many an interview, so I thought I had to be careful about the manner in which I approached this task. But Michael Roberts said “you’re …

In Sri Lanka, cricket is not just played in the back yard; it is played on the roads, beaches, alley ways, paddocks and strips of land By Lawrence Heyn Summer in Australia conjures up images of beaches, barbecues and backyard cricket. A tradition born from a desire for families to …