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Running across the green
When a person is stricken at an early age and realizes that the whole world of active track and field sports is closed to him, how does his mind respond to the calamity? True, Neil Wijeratne is not confined to a wheelchair. To look at him is to see a big made, broad-shouldered, husky man wearing the friendliest of smiles. It is his limp that cannot be hidden. Neil knew, when the debilitation had taken its toll, that he could never run, never compete. As he says, even when in school, he was "let alone", and adds: "No one took care of me when it came to grouping of the students for inter-class matches, whether cricket, rugby, soccer or any other game. I had to build a little world of sports on my own."

That is, in my book, courage. He was young, raw, full of schoolboy idealism, but it was also courage. Neil would watch his college cricket captain, Priya Perera, and batsman Polycarp Wijesekera, and he longed to be another dashing wielder of the willow. He watched Peter Ranasinghe and Brian Buultjens do their artistic footwork and he wanted so much to be a soccerite. He would watch his school team, ably coached by Anthony Abeysinghe, perform on the track, and oh, how he longed to be a star athlete. And there was Hiranjan Perera leaping in the line-outs. What he would have given to be a ruggerite. But sports, to him, was a closed book - or was it? Oh no! Neil could open that book; or better still write one himself!

Tantalising stories
It all began, he says, with his diaries in which he would enthusiastically record all school matches, write what he thought about individual and team performances. He also began to relish the work of the sports writers - Harold de Andrado, M.M. Thawfeek, Eustace Rulach, T.M.K. Samat and S.S. Perera to name a few. Together with Elmo Rodrigopulle, he considers them the pioneers of sports literature in the country. Later, his diaries grew broader in spectrum as he went beyond the school boundaries. There were the cricketing greats of other lands; the rugby stalwarts; the heroes of the Olympics - what a world of sport he created in his own house of memories!

Neil has written "Rugby Across the Straits - Rugby Football Links Between Sri Lanka and India" and in it is a passionate record of these links: an association which he likens to the Mahabharata's two planks of wood floating side by side in the ocean.

The British took rugby to India in 1871, then to Sri Lanka in 1879, Sri Lanka's first rugby tour abroad was to India in 1879, and the All-India Rugby Football Union made its first official tour abroad to this country. With this for starters, Neil has given us a book that is a veritable Rugby Bible. Let me give you a sort of aperitif.

Sri Lanka first figured in the All-India Rugby Tournament held in Madras in 1926.

* The first rugby match in India was played on Christmas Day, 1872 - England vs. Scotland and Ireland, at Calcutta.
* The Calcutta Cup is rated the oldest international rugby contest in the world.
* The first rugby match in Sri Lanka was played in 1879, and the first club to play the game was the Colombo Football Club. The club was amalgamated with the Colombo Hockey Club in 1896 to become the C.H. & F.C.

What Neil has done is praiseworthy. The book is not only of ‘souvenir’ quality, but it is history - a beautifully presented record that will be positively spell-binding to every lover of the sport here and abroad. We have a roll-call of rugby greats and their feats - the Ceylon XV participation in the Madras Presidency Tournament in 1902 and again in 1920; the visit of the 2nd Leicester Regiment in 1910, when they played against the Colombo XV and the Up-Country XV; the All-Ceylon representation at the All-India Rugby Football Tournament in 1924 and in 1929 when we took the trophy.
There's so much more...

Treasure trove
The book is also full of supporting plates, newspaper reactions and reports, even intriguing advertisements. It is a true treasure trove. We are reminded of our 1949 Rugby Fiesta and the way we carried off the trophy. Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake watched the match with the President of the CRFU, E.F.N. Gratiaen. Neil recalls: "This could be the first occasion when rugby was given a prominent place in the front page of a popular newspaper." (The Ceylon Observer).

On and on until the ASIAD, and as the reader would understand, this is a book that cannot really be reviewed. The photographs accompanying the text give us fascinating data of the past - long or recent. There's S.M. 'Dada' Osman who once said, "If you want your son to be a gentleman, then let him play rugby." There's Trevor Nugawela, Abdul Majeed, Y.C. Chang of the Ceylon Barbarians XV, Malcolm Wright, S.B. Pilapitiya, Kavan Rambukwella, J.A. Arenhold, full-back of the All-Ceylon team who also took six wickets for 17 against Madras CA at the Gopalan Trophy match in 1957, Mahes Rodrigo who played cricket and rugby for Ceylon and was in the cricket team that met Bradman's Australians in 1948, and scored an unbeaten 135 against the West Indies in 1949, Fred Aldons, H.H. Campbell and J.D. Farquharson.

This is what Neil has made of his own sporting world, and while he glories in every game he can never hope to play, he is there - on every pitch, at every wicket, on every field, track, and in the pavilion - a spirit that will not be denied its true loves. Neil has now thrown open the doors of his castle, and invites us in. He can tell us with a shining mental imagery of the sports world he cannot enter. But that mental imagery, keen, vivid, exhilarating, is truly physical too.

Neil has conquered all. With his writing, he has broken free, taken the ball, run, run, run, speeding effortlessly, touching down. Nothing can ever cramp the spirit, can it?

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