CREASE FIRE

In Sri Lanka, a national obsession with cricket is helping to heal the wounds of a long-running civil war

Eric Ellis, Colombo

July 2003

IT’S A balmy Saturday evening at Sri Lanka’s mecca of cricket, the Sinhalese Sports Club, and the Royal College Old Boys of 1986 have mixed feelings about the vagaries of the noble game.

Their historic alma mater, regarded as Sri Lanka’s Eton, just can't seem to win the annual three-day “Battle of the Blues” against Royal’s fiercest foe, St Thomas College, the Harrow School of the island.

After 124 years of fierce battle, which Sri Lankan cricket regards as the longest continuously played annual derby in the world, and despite a fine middle-order century in Saturday's second dig, Royal hasn't beaten the “Thomians” since 1991, allowing their arch-rivals to draw level on 32 wins apiece with 60 matches drawn, as was this year's encounter.

But then again, half an Indian Ocean away in the South African city of East London but as close as a TV in the SSC’s pukka clubrooms and radios tuned around the ground, the national team was forcing its way into a World Cup semi-final.

So despite Royal not enjoying victory over St Thomas since 1991, World Cup success is more than good enough for patriotic jubilation and another round of Three Coins, Colombo’s potent local brew, and an arak chaser.

“They are like Jekyll and Hyde,” says delighted rubber planter and Royal's 'class of 86' old boy, Kushan Karunatillaka.

After yet another potent beer-and-arak combo, and a little grooving to the jaunty baile bands that liven the dozen-odd grandstands and pavilions that line the ground, its been established Kushan's referring to the national side, who arte capable of beating all-comers on their day but also have an uncanny habit of grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.

On this cricket-mad island of 19 million people, where it seems every vacant space - be it beach, plantation or the road - has been occupied by boys – and a good few girls – smacking boundaries and taking wickets, Sri Lankan regard their team as huge source of national pride, albeit one that like the long-troubled island itself, hasn't always reached its potential.

“We are clearly the underdog but I think we have put up a very good fight,” Sanjeev Gardiner, the Australian-educated owner of Colombo’s venerable Galle Face Hotel.

But this year seems different. Jubilant local fans are talking up the performance of the fast bowler wicket taker Chaminda Vaas and batting sensation Marvan Attapattu as the ‘new breed’ of Sri Lankan champions taking over from ageing stars, captain Sanath Jayasuriya and Aravinda da Silva.

This last pairing were key to taking Sri Lanka to its biggest ever sporting triumph, that extraordinary night in 1996 at Lahore’s Gadaffi Stadium when their team, then still regarded as a cricketing minor, lifted the World Cup. That the 1996 win was over Australia was doubly sweet; Mark Taylor’s team refused to play their fixtures in Sri Lanka that year as civil war between Sri Lanka's Buddhist Sinhala majority and the separatists Tamil Hindus divided the island.

Seven years and two World Cups later, cricket has come to mean much more for this stunning but war-weary island. Sri Lanka is 18 months into a tentative ceasefire between the mostly Sinhalese government in Colombo and Tamil Tiger rebels, who have fought almost 20 years for an independent homeland, Tamil Eelam, in the island’s Tamil-dominated north-east.

A Norwegian-brokered peace process is still to attain critical mass but with the Tigers dropping their long-cherished breakaway demands in favour of autonomy in a federal state, Sri Lankans are cautiously optimistic that a conflict that has claimed 70,000 lives is finally over.

Cricket has done much to unify the two sides. There’s a well-used cricket pitch alongside the main street of the Tigers' notional capital, Kilinochchi, and teams from the northern city of Jaffna, which for years was under Tiger control, have now re-joined national competitions based in the south.

On a visit to the hardscrabble Eelam, hardened Tiger guerrillas, some still with suicide phials of cyanide strung around their necks, kept CNN Traveller apprised of the latest scores from various matches being played around the world, punctuating their earnest discussion of revolution with gentlemanly cries of ‘good shot’ and ‘well-played’ as they gathered around short-wave radios. Their favorite team was not Sri Lanka’s opponents that day, as one might expect of a people who’ve been fighting a secessionist war of 20 years, but ‘the national squad” doing battle against mighty Australia.

Indeed, the preliminary peace talks were timed so as not to clash with the national team’s fixtures, which bemused the non-cricketing Norwegian officials brokering the peace, but who were savvy enough to acquiesce.

It also helps national harmony that Sri Lanka’s spinning superstar Muttiah Muralitharan is a Tamil, the only one in the team and, crucially, there for his extraordinary ability to turn a ball and devastate his opponents' innings. And ex-captain Aravinda da Silva’s ownership of the island’s only Ferrari is regarded with admiration among the LTTE’s communist revolutionaries.

Now Sri Lankans are awaiting the so-called ‘peace dividend.’ Their battered economy has picked up and tourists are returning to the island’s idyllic beaches and luxuriate in the former Ceylon’s British, Dutch and Portuguese colonial heritage. Hong Kong-based investment bankers are snapping up prime beachfront - title secured - and even the high-end Amanresorts Group is building three $500-a-night hotels.

And for Royal College’s class of 86, a similar homecoming of the World Cup to their beloved island would cap it all. That, and peace.........and sealing that elusive win against St Thomas.