How a Pakistani ‘Great’ and a Ceylonese Official lifted ‘The Cake’
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Neil Perera
With a lot of fanfare and, needless to say, sparing no expenses, the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) took root at Mailtand Place, alongside the Sri Lanka Cricket headquarters a couple of years ago. Then, just as surprisingly, the ACC, as the pithy Sinhala saying goes, uprooted from Sri Lanka even without mentioning the mat (padura) they slept on.
Now how did the ACC, originally, come into being?
The answer lies squarely on the shoulders of Pakistani cricketing legend Abdul Hafeez Kardar, who passed away, aged 71 years, in Lahore on April 21, 1996. Hopefully, he was aware that Sri Lanka, whom he pioneered to the High Table with every inch of his fighting spirit, won the World Cup a few weeks earlier in his very hometown!
Kardar, an aggressive left-hand batsman and a medium-fast left-arm bowler, first played for India – before Partition – and the 29-year-old went on the 1946 tour of England under the captaincy of Iftikhar Ali Khan, alias The Nawab of Pataudi, who was also one of the few international players to have played for two countries. Pataudi had played for England in the controversial 1932-33 Ashes tour of Australia under the captaincy of Douglas Jardine.
Probably realising England was the place for him, Kardar entered Oxford, and won his ‘Blue’ at Cricket. Later, he not only played a couple of successful seasons for Warwickshire, but the handsome all-rounder married the daughter of the Club chairman as well! Returning to Pakistan, he was appointed Test captain. It is to his eternal credit, that in the 23 Tests he skippered, Kardar led his team to victory over all the then Test-playing nations, other than South Africa whom Pakistan did not meet. As the Wisden Cricketers Almanack commented: “……he (Kardar) ruthlessly modernized the organisation of the Pakistani game……….he was an early advocate of neutral umpires…..little of this was well received by his colleagues on ICC at that time ………to break the post-imperial dominance of Lord’s, and to expand the game in Asia.” No wonder Imran Khan said: “After Kardar’s retirement, Pakistan Cricket was thrown to the wolves, the Cricket bureaucrats whose progeny still rule the game.”
Shades of the current situation in Sri Lanka?
In his vision to introduce Full Member status to Ceylon, as we were then known, Kardar had an able lieutenant in the Secretary of the Ceylon Cricket Board, Neil Perera, who served on the local Board of Control for Cricket for well over 25 years in various capacities, including Secretary, Vice President and Manager of the team. The finest moment he enjoyed as Manager must have been when Sri Lanka registered their first overseas Test win against New Zealand at Napier in 1995.
However, there was much hard work that enabled Sri Lanka firstly to stage the World Cup in 1996 in the sub-continent. Winning the title was left to the players! It is to his eternal credit that Neil Perera played a dominant role in ensuring our success. The horse-trading that went on behind the scenes for the eventual success of staging the World Cup in the sub-continent would have made any politician proud. The difference here is that Neil was not doing all of this for his personal betterment, or to fill his pocket.
It is not possible in a short article such as this to give a blow-by-blow account of how Neil Perera achieved this Gargantuan feat. Suffice to quote what the first Asian President of the ICC, Indian Jagmohan Dalmiya, wrote to Neil after it was agreed the 1996World Cup would be staged in the Indian sub-continent: “Without your crucial role at the ICC meeting in London on February 2, 1993, the ‘cake’ (World Cup) perhaps would not have come to this sub-continent.” Adding further, he wrote: “I would like to thank you for all the hard work that you did in the last few months, to make the joint bid of Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka successful….we observed how you intervened on time and placed your opinion forcefully, even in the face of strong opinion from the other side. And the success of the joint bid owes a lot to your hard work and efficiency.”
Neil Perera is a stalwart of the Panadura Sports Club, both as a player and administrator for well over half-a-century. As an administrator, the service he rendered, mostly at his own expense, both to his club and to the Cricket Board, cannot be assessed. Administrators of his calibre were not uncommon in that era. Beginning with the then Cricket Board President Robert Senanayake, who set a sterling (in the real sense of the word!) example, for instance, when having to attend the AGM of the ICC in London, it was out of his own pocket. His rupees were converted to sterling!
Then there was A.R.M. Hathy, a Chartered Accountant by profession, who served as Honorary Treasurer for 16 years, from 1957, with expert guidance and skill. The title of Honorary really filled his name. He was also President of the Moors Sports Club and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. Then there were other officials too of his calibre such as Brigadier Denis Hapugalle, M.K.M. Ismail, B.J.H. Bahar, S. Pathmanathan, M.R. Naina Marikkar, Nisal Senaratne, Trevor Jansz, Col. F.C.de Saram et al of the same ilk. None of them were pawns of politicians and rendered their services in a selfless manner. Of course there was one bad egg and naturally, he was a politician’s hatchet man.
Wonder how many of the present lot of officials can match up to the quality of their pioneers, beginning with Neil Perera now aged 89 years, and living in retirement. He still has not forgotten the role played by Abdul Hafeez Kardar.