THE BIGGEST OF THE BIG ‘UNs - ARE YOU READY?

By Kangaroo Woodstone

From a Thomian to a Royalist I need to get this off my chest. It’s not that you guys have not won in years, you guys have also made us forget the taste of defeat.
Things have changed. There is no Royalist cricketer or cricket commentator in the contemporary national pantheon whose name is worth remembering.
Buddy Reid the Thomian cricket coach this year would tell you that when he represented Sri Lanka, there were seven players no less who represented the country who hailed from S. Thomas’ College.
This is a sort of sensation that Royal has hardly been used to even though both schools have not produced national players substantially for a long time now.
But we are forgiving of and deferential to Royal in this, their 175th year.
It’s being made sure that all and sundry know that Royalists are descending in their droves to the SSC for this the 131st encounter of the best big match of all time.
The Thomians are ready to gracefully bow out of the spotlight for these descending notables until that hour of Thomian victory at which time too the Royalists would have a providential box seat from which to view the proceedings.

Mathematically minded

Today S. Thomas’ College has a brand new Warden who does not believe in pussyfooting and he is a mathematically minded priest who would probably tell you that the odds of Royal winning this year’s match are in an inverse proportion of sorts to their reaching 175, a notable landmark.
There was a time when the Speaker mentioned in the Sri Lankan parliament that the House has to be adjourned as most of the MPs were at the Royal-Thomian.
This particular year that problem would not beset the Speaker as partly the quality of the legislature is abysmal with few Royalists and Thomians being in it —- and with parliament being dissolved at that.
Today there are no test matches being played in the country either with the Sri Lankan national team’s itinerary for the year being reduced to just the one series in November against the West Indies.
In the absence of other substantial long duration matches who needs test cricket anymore as the Royal-Thomian with its three day format now on its 131st year is the only approximation we have to test cricket at the beginning of the annual cricket season.
Heh heh - it’s probably the absence of Thomians and Royalists at Sri Lanka Cricket too (!) but whatever it may be, after more than thirty years of playing test cricket they cannot get Sri Lanka to play more than one series? That’s worse than a Duckworth-Louis decision.
Now that should have been fought tooth and nail but where is the gentleman’s game? Many of the non Thomians and non Royalists play the game for the baksheesh these days, so to see the gentleman’s game — a ‘real test match’, you need to turn up at the SSC to watch Royal play S. Thomas.
Almost a third of the second century of Royal Thomian cricket is up, which is why with these traditions you wouldn’t see the game being interrupted for wars, or due to the whims or fancies of some international cricketing official or the other.
This is the pristine thing — cricket luverly cricket.
We wonder why none of the lesser... ooops... the other big match playing schools could not graduate to the three day format in the first place.
They seem to be in love with drawn games.
Royal and STC started the tradition of returning results at big matches and not draws, which is a new phenomenon in school cricket in the last few decades.

What happens outside

But yet the entire thing is about what happens outside the cricketing arena and therein tradition dictates that girls schools are invaded thereby before the match —- it is only a curmudgeon or a misanthrope who could try to put a stop to these traditions, though the prerogative of school principals to guard their turfs —- even non-convent turfs — is not being questioned.
By the way if you have to refer up the dictionary to know the meaning of those two words, you definitely did not belong to either of these two schools, and definitely not that school by the sea -- more the pity then, eh what?
Esto Perpetua.