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by KUMAR SANGAKKARA

Since joining the league of Test playing nations back in 1982, Sri Lankan cricket has rapidly become a serious, winning business. Once the epitome of happy go lucky cricketers whose reason was not the winning but the taking part, Sri Lanka now has a team that can compete on any playing field and win. The most striking example of this was the now famous World Cup win in 1996 when Sanath Jayasuriya and Aravinda de Silva. to name but two, gave evidence, if it was needed, that Sri Lankans had the capacity to beat the best in the world.

In the Test arena also there have been some major successes both at home and overseas. What Sri Lankan can forget Muttiah Muralitheran spinning England to defeat at the Oval in 1998? In 2001 we whitewashed the West Indies 3-0 at home and then repeated the result against Zimbabwe.

During this time seven grounds have hosted Test matches in Sri Lanka with Colombo claiming four of them. Out of town, you will find two beautiful grounds at Kandy and at Galle while Moratuwa has the Tyronne Fernando Stadium.

The capital Colombo can claim four Test match venues. The inaugural Test against England in February 1982 was held at the P. Saravanamuttu Stadium.

England won it comfortably enough, although a half century from a schoolboy called Arjuna Ranatunga served notice of what was to come.

The Colombo Cricket Club ground has hosted just three Tests while the R. Premadasa Stadium achieved worldwide renowned as the setting in 1997-98 for the world record Test score. Facing an Indian first innings of 537 for eight, the Sri Lankan batsmen made most of the pitch to compile a massive 952 for six. It was the third highest total in first-class cricket and the highest in Test cricket, eclipsing England's 903 for seven at the Oval in 1938.

During the course of the innings, Sanath Jayasuriya and Roshan Mahanama shared a partnership of 576 - the highest for any wicket at Test level. Mahanama made 225 while Jayasuriya looked sure to overtake Brian Lara's record of 375 when he fell to the off-spinner Chauhan for 340. The last of Colombo's grounds and the one that has staged by far the most Test matches in Sri Lanka is the Sinhalese Sports Club ground.

SSC grounds

England has Lord's, Australia has the MCG and Sri Lanka has the Sinhalese Sports Club, the SSC. The history is not as long and the names that figure in the annals of the ground's history are fewer but for Sri Lankans, the SSC is the home of cricket.

The setting at the SSC is not as picturesque as some other Test grounds in Sri Lanka. Asgiriya, overlooking the hills in Kandy, and the International Stadium by the sea in Galle can claim that accolade as high-rise concrete buildings have come up to spoil the vistas of the SSC.

It is, however, where the game was nurtured through schools matches and through club games and although it cannot claim to be the first Test ground in Sri Lanka, it can claim seniority by dint of its having staged more Tests than any other ground.

Like Lord's and the MCG the houses the administrative headquarters of the national game, it is the spiritual home of Sri Lankan cricket.

My own association with the ground began as an 18-year-old when I turned up to play for Kandy against Colombo in the under-19 district final. Apart from a few friends and some loyal family members, the ground was pretty deserted but it was still impressive. To walk to the middle was to imagine what it would be like to play in a Test match there, to take strike was to imagine how it would feel to make a hundred.

Like many other young Sri Lankans with a mad passion for cricket, I had been brought up on tales of the SSC. Bertie Wijesingha, my cricket coach at school from under 15 to under 19 level, was an SSC stalwart and he used to talk about it a lot. He would also bring friends down to the Nondescript Cricket Club, one of these was Sidath Wettimuny, something of a legend in Sri Lankan cricket after he thrashed the England bowlers around Lord's in 1984 making the small matter of 196, He was an inspiration.

Since that day, I have been fortunate enough to play Test cricket at the SSC and to make a Test hundred there. The feeling on both occasions was better than anything I could imagine as an 18-year-old.

The cricket history of the stadium relates back to a period of over a century. When Sri Lanka was Ceylon and is the saga of grit and determination of an association of very wealthy, influential and highly dedicated people to display the best.

In 1899, a cricket match between a Combined Schools XI, drawn from three schools Royal, S. Thomas' and Wesley and belonging exclusively to the majority Sinhala community of Ceylon, and Colts CC, a leading club, resulted in an unexpected one-run win in the first innings for the Schools.

During the British occupation, which lasted from 1796 to 1948, the English expatriates tried to impress upon the natives that the game of cricket they indulged in was a part of their great upper class cultural heritage.

The Anglican missionaries who accompanied the British rulers who introduced the game into their educational curriculum as a serious discipline containing many moral virtues and dubbed it 'the king of sports.' The missionaries provided ample facilities, good playing fields, equipment and coaches to impart basic coaching to the students of their two leading schools in Colombo Royal and S. Thomas' Mount Lavinia, establishments that lured the cream of the emerging native classes who could afford to pay high school fees. However, the keen and talented Sinhalese school leavers had no organised facilities to continue with the game.

Combined schools win

This single run victory for the Combined Schools XI created a sensation as school cricket was the centre of attraction at the time - it was to remain so in the entire pre-Test era with newspapers constantly carrying lavish praises of schoolboy achievements. Thus the leading newspaper, Ceylon Independent, wrote:

"This splendid performance of the eleven members of the all Sinhalese team brought them into the discussion on the formation of a Sinhalese club. A club establishing itself in 1899 as the Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC) acquired a lease of land with sandy soil covered with cinnamon trees at Victoria Park in 1900. The club was not short of development funds as it began to be patronised by the wealthiest of the Sinhalese and the club duly unveiled its first turf wicket in 1917. Club membership was limited to Sinhalese men and, as in all Ceylonese clubs, the members imitated the British in every way from their mode of dress to the grammatical correctness, with a bit of slang thrown in of their spoken English.

They organised regular ballroom dancing, drank scotch and took great pride in their secondary education at leading Anglican missionary schools. They were also most particular in their use of fork and spoon instead of the fingers when eating the staple rice and curry. Arjuna Ranatunga, a man from a typical Sinhala background who went on to captain Sri Lanka in 56 Tests, once remarked in a television interview how uncomfortable he felt at the start of his career with the alien table manners of the SSC.

The club played its first match on July 14, 1900 at Galle Face against the Colombo Sports Club, which had ten Englishmen. It was an ominous beginning Ceylon Independent reported: "SSC began its first match in style. Their performance has taken the cricket world by storm. Their first essay entitled them to an undisputed place among the first class clubs. SSC fielded eight players groomed at S. Thomas' and three from Royal. Five of them were schoolboys. This pattern continued during the pre-test era. Royalists and Thomians had a stranglehold on the SSC team and consequently on the All Ceylon team although just occasionally they recruited the best talent from outside Colombo, men like H. Abeywardena who was brought in from Galle in 1941.

Social events

In the earlier years,the matches were friendly social events with even the British Governor gracing the occasion. SSC become the first Sri Lankan team to sponsor a foreign team when in 1909 they invited the Australian team returning home from England. Thereafter the club invited many teams from India and acted as a regular stopover for Australian and English teams en route to fight for the Ashes. The All Ceylon team, featuring the likes of Stanley Jayasinghe, F. C. de Saram and Gamini Goonasena who made the grade in county cricket, never beat either of these teams although since the arrival of Test status, Sri Lanka has won against both.

In 1952, four years after independence, the club acquired another Crown lease of about 20 acres and shifted to the present venue. Maitland Place, which had been used as an aerodrome by the Allied Forces during the Second World War. The first match on the new grounds was played on October 4, 1955 and a substantial pavilion was built the following year with Donovan Andree, Ceylon's biggest nightclub entrepreneur contributing a colossal sum of 300,000 rupees.

In 1946 the club membership was opened to non Sinhalese and ladies and, 20 years later, under the guidance of Colonel Derick de Saram, its 'live-wire' honorary cricket secretary, an Oxford Blue' who played for Middlesex and had scored a century in England against the visiting Australians in 1934, the club starting converting the ground into a stadium with a capacity of 12,000.

Originally half a dozen workers attended to the duties on the grounds and the surrounding areas. The numbers have now trebled with much more care being taken to maintain the playing areas up to international standards and manicuring the lawns and flowerbeds to give the premises the look of quality. Ranil Abeynaike, its curator, until recently tells a story about the inherent dangers for the ground staff. "The Eastern side of the field was once not used for cricket and was neglected. It was a breeding place for the creeping, crawling and flying types, from vicious vipers to cobras, water monitors, iguanas and tortoises and many species of feathered birds. There was only one incident of a human being falling victim to these creatures - a labourer sitting on a curled up viper."

And you wonder why I became a wicketkeeper.

Exciting era

In 1982, Test cricket came to Sri Lanka. It was the dawn of an exciting new era and, after a slow start that saw just two tests played there in the first six years, the SSC has emerged as the leading ground in the island. In its relatively short history, it has certainly staged some memorable matches. Some of them Sri Lanka won, others we lost. One of our victories against Bangladesh in the Asian Test Championship in September 2001, gave the SSC a special place in the history books as the Bangladeshi batsman Mohammad Ashraful became the youngest man to score a Test hundred. Perhaps that should be because he was one day short of his seventeenth birthday when he made his 114.

One of the defeats, however, came in August 1992 in a match against Australia that may be said to have changed the course of cricket history.

Sri Lanka dominated the game, bowling the Australians out for 256 and then piling up a massive 547 for eight declared. There were hundreds for Asanka Gurusingha, Romesh Kaluwitharana and Ranatunga, the only surprise was the attacking Aravinda de Silva who had shown a distinct liking for Australian bowling during the series 'Down Under' two years before, made just six.

Aravinda was a great player, as good a batsman as Sachin Tendulkar or Brian Lara, who came to relish playing at the SSC. He made five centuries there, including two in the same match against Pakistan in 1996-97, and is the only person to have made more than 1,000 runs at the ground. He was also one of the best off-spinners we had although he did not often get the chance to show what he could do.

The Australians batted better in their second innings with everyone getting into double figures but the target for Sri Lanka in the fourth innings was only 181. The pitch was taking spin but it was still very gettable. At 127 for two, with Aravinda batting beautifully, Sri Lanka looked home and dry. Then Aravinda fell to Craig McDermott for 39. Ranatunga followed soon after and panic set in with wickets tumbling at regular intervals. Only Gurusinha held firm but he could do nothing when Allan Border tossed the ball to a chunky beach blonde leg-spinner. Having been caned all around the SSC in the first innings for a return of nought for 107 in 22 overs, the leg-spinner responded by taking the last three wickets for no runs in just 13 balls. Australia won by 16 runs and the legend of Shane Warne was born.

As schoolboys watching on the television, it was a crushing experience. One minute we were all excited at the prospect of beating Australia, the next we were down and out in Colombo and Kandy. Losing from that position was a harsh lesson in Test cricket but it was one that held Sri Lanka in good stead seven months later when England came to the SSC for a one-off Test.

This time, Sri Lanka had at young spinner in their side called Muttiah Muralitharan who had taken 13 wickets in his first Test against New Zealand, and who was to become every bit as influential as Warne over the next decade. The English arrived in disarray having just lost 3-0 in India and Sri Lanka duly completed their misery with a five wickets win. England started the game in positive fashion with Robin Smith, opening in place of Graham Gooch who chose not to play on this last leg of the tour, making 128.

But with Murali, playing his second Test, taking four wickets, they were restricted to 380.

The home batsmen responded with relish, five of the top six passing 50. Only Gurusinha with 43 missed out but de Silva, all wristy elegance, and Hashan Tillekeratne ensured a healthy first innings lead as they took Sri Lanka to 469.

The English batsmen faltered as the off-spinner Jayananda Warnaweera spun his own web and Sri Lanka were left with the task of scoring 140 for an historic first win over the Colonial masters.

It was only 15 at the time but we followed Sri Lanka's progress on the television with our hearts were in our mouths as John Emburey and Phil Tufnell started to pick up the wickets.

At 61 for four, we had that sinking feeling we experienced against the Australians but then Ranatunga and Tillekeratne showed that they had learnt their lesson well, taking Sri Lanka to within four runs of the target before Ranatunga fell to Tufnell. Victory, however, was ours and, as David Hopps, one of the English journalists covering the Test wrote in the Guardian, the celebrations were long and noisy.

Sri Lanka's fourth win in 43 Tests - and their second in succession - was richly deserved. It was celebrated by 7,000 spectators, at least half of whom had been given free admission at lunchtime, and by a man flinging firecrackers which made such a racket that it would have been no surprise, bearing in mind the country's recent civil disorder, if the Army had not mistakenly declared another state of emergency. It was a party to remember and one that everyone connected with the long history of the SSC enjoyed. The atmosphere at the ground has always been good although attendances for Test matches have dwindled.

Sri Lankans seem to prefer watching the one-day game but you still get an array of men and women in colourful outfits, young and old from all walks of life, baila singing, dancing and papare bands creating a carnival atmosphere. The crowd can be vociferous but they are not offensive. In many ways they are like a crowd in the West Indies. They genuinely appreciate good cricket, whoever plays it, especially Percy, the self-styled poet of Sri Lankan cricket.

Murali-the star

Percy sits up in the stands, leading the chanting and offering instant verse; he is not Byron but some of it is quite good.

We had a less happy experience when England came back in 2000-01. This time Graham Thorpe made 113 and we slipped to 81 all out in our second innings. England only needed 74 to win but we almost 'did an Australia on them', as we took six wickets before Thorpe took them past the winning line.

Maybe if we had another 30 runs we would have won that one too.

Since that game, the SSC has been good to us, as we have won five on the trot there three of them by an innings.

Murali has had a lot to do with this success. He is easily the highest wicket-taker at the ground with 96 and has taken five wickets in an inning seven times there with a best of eight for 87 against India.

With Murali, however, it is not just that he takes so many wickets, it is the aura that he brings with him to the team. We know going into a Test match that the opposition is scared of him. Many of the world's top batsmen do not have a clue how to play him. It seems to be only the left-handers who get to grips with him.

Thorpe is one example but Andy Flower and Brian Lara are others who famed him at the SSC. As a Tamil within Sri Lanka, he is also a unifying force, doing more for the peace process than any politician will ever do. When Murali bowls, he bowls for the whole of Sri Lanka and people from every corner of society, never mind their political beliefs are behind him.

As for questions about his action, I have no doubt that he is absolutely legal. To me he is a clean, great bowler whose finest achievement at the SSC may have been the eight for 87 he took against India in 2001.

This was another memorable Test for Sri Lanka. Murali's bowling on the first day put out India for 234 and we then sat back to enjoy a batting feast. I made 47 which, in the contest of the innings, was a relative failure as four of my teammates made centuries - Marvan Atapattu, Jayawardene, Tillekeratne and Samaraweera.

Harbhajan Singh, fresh from his heroics against Australia, managed just two for 185. Murali picked up another three wickets in the second innings but we dismissed them for 299 to win by an innings and 77 runs.

Another bowler who has enjoyed himself at the SSC in Chaminda Vaas, a much underrated left-arm swing bowler, who earned a place in the history books with a match return of 14 for 191 in our ten wicket defeat of the West Indies in 2001-02. Although we won easily enough in the end, this was a great Test match that featured two truly great performances. It was pretty much a dual between Vaas and Brian Lara whose battles with Murali in the first two Tests were the stuff of legend. That is not to belittle the contribution of Hashan Tillekeratne who weighed in with an excellent 204 not out. It is just that Lara and Vaas were on a different level.

To stand behind the wicket when Lara is batting is a double-edged sword. On the one hand you want to get rid of him as soon as possible to prevent him running riot and yet on the other, you don't mind him staying a while. To watch him at such close quarters is a privilege. His balance and timing is exquisite. In the first innings, he held the West Indies together, posting his fourth Test double century and passing 7,000 runs in the process of making 221.

Even then, Lara was never convinced himself that he had the better of Murali. I remember one occasion during his double century when he played down the wrong line. He turned around to me and laughed. "I just can't read this guy," he said. That did not stop him from using his feet and hitting him through mid-wicket, the kind of shot that makes one wonder how does he do that?

Vaas - blows Windies

The only other contributions came from Ramnaresh Sarwan and Carl Hooper as they made 390. Chaminda blew the rest of them away in taking seven for 120 including the wicket of Lara, bowled off an inside edge. Our innings centred around Hashan's patient double century and for the first time since 1978-79 the West Indies conceded over 600. Chaminda was soon among the wickets again, swinging the ball awkwardly, but Lara again stood in our path.

At the start of the fifth day they were 92 behind with eight wickets in hand as Sarwan again gave good support to Lara. In the seventh over, however, he followed a wide one from Vaas and edged in to me. I have never been so happy to hold on to a nick. It exposed the West Indies middle order and Chaminda ran through them again, this time taking seven for 71 and finishing off the innings with four wickets in nine balls.

Lara made 130 before being bowled by Nuwan Zoysa to finish the three Test series with 688 runs. His 351 runs in this Test were the most by a batsman on the losing side in a Test. He did not deserve to finish on the losing side that day, any more than he deserved to be a part of a team beaten three nil. Chaminda enjoyed another great day at the SSC in 2000-01 when he took eight for 19 against Zimbabwe, the best return ever in a one-day international. Vaas is unusual in that the SSC seems to be more of a hunting ground for spin bowlers. Apart from Murali, Nicky Boje, Anil Kumble and the New Zealander Daniel Vettori have all had profitable experience there.

Incidentally, another Kiwi, Martin Crowe has the distinction of being the snail of the SSC. In 1983-84 he managed just 19 in 217 minutes. I know he was a fine player but I am not sure I would have enjoyed standing behind the stumps for that one.

Of the quick bowlers, Ravi Ratnayake, Chris Cairns and Wasim Akram have all had days to remember while Brett Schultz, the South African left armer, sent down arguably the quickest spell when he took nine wickets in their win there in 1993. On a personal note,the SSC has been good to me.

Arjuna-pork chops

My first Test there was against South Africa in 2000. It happened to coincide with Arjuna Ranatunga's last Test so it was a very special occasion. I did not make many runs but after batting at number six during the first two Tests, I was promoted to number three in the second innings. It was the real start of my run in the team.

And yet, amid all that, my abiding memory be of Arjuna tucking into pork chops for his lunch, usually we had rice, lentils, salads, what you might call healthy food, for our lunch but Arjuna had requested pork chops and Chinese food and the team physio, Alexa Kountouri, complied. I am not sure I ever saw Arjuna quite so happy. He was of course, a massively influential player who dragged Sri Lanka out of the cosseted, forelock-tugging mindset that we were in when we first joined the Test scene.

Under Arjuna, we became a Test nation that stood up to the old world and demanded respect some people did not like it. Warne once remarked that it would be good for international cricket if Arjuna quit, but for Sri Lanka he was a vital element in our development. He did much the same for the SSC, turning it from a club dominated by the elite public schools of Colombo to one, which is now more open and forward thinking.

Having achieved one schoolboy ambition by playing for Sri Lanka, I was fortunate enough to fulfil another when on December 28, 2001` I completed my first, and as I write, only Test century at the SSC. It came at the expense of Zimbabwe and the best thing about it was that it led to an innings victory and ultimately a three-nil series win. I made 128 and loved every moment of it.

Sometimes, as a batsman, you have days when you know it is going to be your day and this was one of those as I dropped into a rhythm right from the start. Conditions were perfect, the outfield was like glass. When I reached three figures I did not really take in the achievement. I was too involved in the game at hand and going on to make enough runs to put Zimbabwe under pressure.

It was only when I was back in the pavilion and then, when the game was over and I was able to have a few days away from the cricket that I was able to think about it. I thought about this game and my part in it and then began to think about some of the others who have made Test hundreds at the SSC.

It made me realise how privileged I am to have been a small part in the wonderful jigsaw that makes up the history of this great ground.

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