25 August 2021 11:19 am Views - 1528
I am a ninety-year old former All-Ceylon cricketer who represented the national team from 1950 to 1967. After retirement I served the Cricket Board in various advisory capacities, including as Manager of touring teams to New Zealand, England, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
It was in 1966 that I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting Mr. ‘Killi’ Rajamahendran. Having just returned to Ceylon (Sri Lanka then) after a decade of professional cricket in England, ‘Killi’ invited me to coach his Maharajah Cricket team, who were playing Mercantile ‘A’ Division cricket. He had planned to recruit talented, unemployed and underpaid cricketers and build a Championship side. The entire team was duly ‘kitted’ with creamish yellow cricket gear and requested to concentrate on winning the Championship Cup. This achievement was regularly realized and semi-professionalism came into being, in Ceylon.
His enthusiasm was infectious and more mercantile establishments took the cue in stages. ‘Killi’s successful ventures reached the ears of Minister Gamini Dissanayake who was heading the Cricket Board and aspiring to gain full ICC Membership. The Minister, who was already ‘chummy’ with ‘Killi’, then catalysed and ensured a successful tour of England which eventuated in Ceylon earning full ICC Membership, a couple of years later.
It is worthy of mention that the Cricket Board’s finances were in the doldrums during the period. But ‘Killi’ came to the rescue and shouldered the bulk of the burden. ‘Killi’s benign disposition was not confined to cricket and cricketers only. The poor and needy too were within his compass and his benevolence extended to the remote corners of the country. This writer too is grateful to the many generous gestures bestowed on him over the years.
To his ever-loving wife Canice and the children, I offer my deepest and heartfelt sympathies.
Stanley Jayasinghe