Last week we commented on school cricket where leading cricketers lamented that school cricket has been neglected at a meeting held with Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa regarding the building of another International Cricket Stadium in Homagama.
While that project has been put on hold, and needs no more comment, the writer would like to go down memory lane and recall some interesting episodes during the writer’s inter-school playing days which were the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Interest in school cricket in that era was at its pinnacle or zenith to best describe it. Every school had cheer squads and venues would see spectators packed like sardine and the cheering was deafening from the moment the umpires called play at sharp 12 noon.
‘Umpire hora’, ‘Hora umpire’ were the incessant shouts when an umpire turned down an appeal or upheld one. Every school had a cheer leader with his cheer mates. ‘What’s the colour’ would shout the cheer leader and the response would be ‘green and white’, speaking for my school SBC. There were other hilarious shouts but it was in the vernacular and difficult to put in print.
The Bens had two strong cheer leaders in Kenneth Dabrera and Ben Anthony. But here’s an incident that would evoke great laughter. St. Benedict’s were playing Royal at Reid Avenue in 1960 with Bens captained by the writer and Michael Dias leading the Royals.
One of the umpires in that game was a guy named Lappen. His umpiring left much room for criticism with his bad umpiring going against the Bens at interesting stages of the game and when the pendulum swung either way, bad decisions by that umpire saw the Bens lose that game in a close finish.
Stung by the bad decisions, the Bens cheer squad led by Anthony roughed up the umpire after the game and that was the last seen or heard of that umpire in school cricket.
But the aftermath of that incident was what followed. The Bens were playing SJC at Kotahena the following week and there was Anthony in his usual belligerent best cheering his old school.
When the Joes appealed for an lbw decision, bell like voiced Anthony would shout: ‘Umpire, what happened to Lappen would happen to you’. And both umpires who had heard what happened the previous week and not wanting to suffer the same fate would reply –‘NOT OUT’ to much laughter. That was Anthony at his best for you. Now you don’t get characters like him in school cricket.
Floyd’s dying was not in vain
America never had it so bad. Riots and looting broke out in many states angered by the brutal killing of a black man by white policemen, especially a guy who knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes with Floyd shouting – ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’, to no avail.
A bystander had filmed the incident on a mobile phone and circulated it on social media and from the time it was shown on TV riots broke out of unimaginable proportions and even at the time of writing the rioting and looting has not ceased.
Many countries supported and held demonstrations against the cruel killing. Many banners and placards were carried condemning the killing saying: ‘Black lives matter’. ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’.
Apartheid was a dirty word not so long ago and although it is not practiced openly now, it yet exists. Here are two incidents experienced by the writer on his tour to South Africa and Zimbabwe covering cricket for the ’Daily News’ and the ‘Sunday Observer’.
Apartheid was at its worst in South Africa and how cruelly the blacks were treated especially the love-able Nelson Mandela need not be reiterated here.
When in South Africa with the late journalist KDS Gunasekera, thanks to the generosity of manager Stanley Jaysinghe ‘KDS’ and the writer were accommodated in the team bus driven by a black man.
We kept the driver company at lunch and the driver wanted the white guy who was serving us to wrap the remainder of the lunch as a take-away. The white guy looked hard at the driver and the next moment spilled the lunch into the bin. Did not the black driver feel bad.
Then in Zimbabwe, with no fax to transmit my copy of the match at the Press Box, I was asked to use the fax machine at the general office. Once when I attempted to get to the fax machine I was stopped by a white guard who informed me that an inquiry was on and I would have to wait. The guard was ignorant that I had a deadline to keep.
When I asked the guard what was the inquiry about he said a black woman who was cleaning the toilets had used it to ease herself and was spotted doing so. After the inquiry the poor black woman was given the standing sack. It broke my heart to see the poor woman leaving the premises with tears streaming down her cheeks. I tried to speak to her but was stopped by the guard.
In addition the black woman could not speak or understand English, otherwise I could have interviewed her and filed a heart rending story on the cruelty to the blacks.
I had heard of cruelty to blacks, but this was the first time I experienced it. So it must be understood that blacks are also human and so the looting and rioting in most American cities are justified for the brutal killing of GEORGE FLOYD. The sin he had committed was that he was allegedly carrying a counterfeit 20 dollar bill.
One can’t forget how that greatest black boxing champion of all time Muhammed Ali (Cassis Clay) threw his Heavyweight Gold Medal he won in 1960 Olympics into the Ohio river because he was not allowed into a restaurant meant for whites.
Ali vowed to thrash any white boxer he would encounter before knocking him out and he did just that.