Sri Lankans love their cricket. The love of cricket has seeped into the Sri Lankan psyche; it embodies the Sri Lankan people’s love of life. We celebrate victory to the maximum and accept defeat with equanimity, knowing that both success and failure are parts of life. It is an understanding arising from the age-old religious [...]

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The Sundaytimes Sri Lanka

Our favourite cricketers get a quirky twist

By Chamara Sumanapala
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Sri Lankans love their cricket. The love of cricket has seeped into the Sri Lankan psyche; it embodies the Sri Lankan people’s love of life. We celebrate victory to the maximum and accept defeat with equanimity, knowing that both success and failure are parts of life. It is an understanding arising from the age-old religious influences without which our culture would not have been what it is.

Cricket is the most potent ‘soft power’ we have had in the last two decades in projecting our nation to the world. It is the achievements of our cricketers which has made the sport a potential source of national prestige. Cricket fans around the world may sometimes not know where our island nation is located.

But tell them about Jayasuriya, Muralitharan, Sangakkara or Lasith Malinga and they will know which nation we are talking of and where we stand in the cricket world.

Fans watching the 2012 Twenty20 World Cup, would have no doubt seen the Ceylon Biscuits Manufacturers (Pvt.) Ltd. new television commercial to support the Sri Lankan team at the championship. Titled “Jaya Vewa Sri Lanka” it features a unique form of art based on the curved line. We see Lasith Malinga clean bowling a helpless batsman, uprooting the middle stump in the process, while Sri Lankan batsmen are thrashing the opposition bowling, to the delight of a number of fans who dance and wave flags to the jaunty rhythm of a ‘papare’ tune. You hardly see a straight line in any of these figures in the commercial – a depiction of the love of cricket and love of life of our cricket fans.

The brain and the hands behind this new commercial are those of internationally known architect and artist, Tilak Samarawickrema. Born in Colombo, he lived abroad, mainly in Italy, for more than a decade from 1971 where he plunged into the world of art.

Samarawickrema has exhibited his work all over the world, in Rome, Milan, New York and Sao Paulo. Now in the digital age, he has leapfrogged the art establishment with the new commercial, bypassing the art galleries and entering tens of thousands of Sri Lankan homes through TV. His art is now not limited to the select crowd who would have come to an art exhibition. The commercial will find common ground with the feelings of millions who steadfastly support their cricketers.




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