 Neil Wijratne’s ‘Batting on a matting wicket’, based on his Friday column to the Daily Mirror during the period 2003 to 2011 and has been published in book form.
Neil started starts his Sports Nostalgia column by saying, “I was packing my baggage to go to Mumbai when I received the invitation to write a column for the Daily Mirror – Sports Weekly. I was in a dilemma. To accommodate another column in between my two literary pieces for a couple of Sinhala weekend papers looked a little daunting.
But it’s always a pleasure to have a dip in our colourful and cherished sports history and talk about sports personalities such as Nirmala Dissanayake, ASM Khan, Nagalingam Ethirveerasingham, Mahinda Aluvihare, Peter Ranasinghe, Lucky Alagoda and Thilaka Jinadasa.
The 200 paged book is printed on easy-to-read white paper and printed on a large and easily readable type with attractive headlines such as ‘Sir Don at the pavilion’; ‘Natives on a tree top’, ‘One Cent Toffee Seller’, ‘When Fred Perera batted on and on.’
The contents are wide and varied such as John Arenhold – Ceylon’s South African, Old boys love cricket, Wasim Raja; bringing back memories of Sobers, Fire on turf, Cricketing stars from another day, Trinity-St. Joseph’s; a century of matches and Those long innings in Sara Trophy cricket.
Neil Wijeratne holds a degree in Law from the University of Ceylon and is a practicing lawyer.
An old boy of St. Joseph’s College Colombo, he had his debut novel published in 1968 whilst as a schoolboy. Being a bi-lingual writer and columnist he has so far authored 14 books, ranging from fiction to travel and sport. He was the first Honorary Recorder of the Sri Lanka Rugby Football Union. He had also served as the Honorary Recorder of the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka.
‘Batting on matting’ is dedicated to Hector Perera, skipper of St. Joseph’s College Cricket team of 1970, ‘for being a dear friend for over five decades, and also in remembrance of our schooldays…’
A must read for sports fans and ideal for libraries.
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