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| Sunday, 27 November 2005 |
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Neil the all-rounder By Penrose Fernandopulle (Former St. Joseph's cricketer) The plaudits and green backs that are very much a part of the modern sports culture of today is reserved for the champions who bring the crowds to the stand and then to their feet. The hosannas when they are sung are lavish and all encompassing. The glamour rules the day. There is one star though who plies his sports in many arenas, offering a straight bat in cricket, a slick pass in rugby, a perfect dribble in soccer, or a scintillating dash in athletics, without so much as a walk in the park. For this is a star who does not let an incapacity concur his passion for the sports he dearly loves. Affected by a disability from the tender age of two, Neil Wijeratne dreamed of donning his college jersey one day. But when that was not to be, he chose to traverse the fields of sport, painstakingly stopping to observe and record, to tour and study, and to spin and weave, a tapestry full of colour and rhythm. From 1956 to 1970 Neil strode the halls and fields at St. Joseph's, from where he sojourned to become an attorney- at-law and perhaps more importantly, one of Sri Lanka's most accomplished sports journalists. Though not able to prance across the sports fields of his motherland, Neil scans the arenas with a flair and aplomb not easily matched. His writing courts precision and his prose flirts with the poetic. Indeed, his is a saga of the super star, who excels in the cauldron of sports special moments. A pity then that his alma mater has not chosen to honour one of its most precious sons, who has probably done more than most to give belief and bounty to Josephian sport. Nor for that matter has the state, which has overlooked Neil from the honour he so richly deserves. The pithy jibe 'that a poet is not honoured in his own land' rings a melancholy sound. For Neil though the fire in his belly we will continue to see, even beyond his latest triumph, 'Bengali Yaheliya', a little cameo from the sub-continent. |
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