93rd Battle of the Maroons next weekend
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(From left) Nethma Samaraweera (Captain, Ananda College), Bimal Wijayasinghe (Joint Committee Chairman Battle of the Maroons - Ananda), Lal Dissanayake (Principal, Ananda College), Upali Gajanaike (Group Chief Officer, Programme Management and Tele-Infrastructure, Dialog Axiata PLC), Asanga Priyadarshana (Group Chief of Risk and Compliance, Dialog Axiata PLC), Thilak Waththuhewa (Principal, Nalanda College), Varuna Ratnaweera (Joint Committee Chairman Battle of the Maroons – Nalanda) and Chanul Athukorala (Captain, Nalanda College)
The 93rd edition of the annual cricket match between Sri Lanka’s premier Buddhist schools, Ananda College and Nalanda College, well known as ‘The Battle of the Maroons’, will take place on March 4 and 5 at Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo.
After a hiatus of two years, due to Covid-19 restrictions and other factors that disrupted school cricket encounters, the Battle of Maroons will be played with no crowd restrictions for the first time since 2020 and will be organised in its full glory at the traditional venue with the participation of present and old boys of both schools.
After a wait of 69 years, Nalanda College Colombo beat their brother school in last year’s encounter and Anandians will be prowling this year to bring back the Dr. N.M. Perera Trophy to their fold from the Nalanda principal’s silverware cabinet.
The limited overs match between the two schools for the late P. de S. Kularathne Trophy, and will be contested at the same venue on March 12 for the 46th time in the Battle of the Maroons history. Ananda College lead this series with 26 wins while Nalanda College has 15 wins to their credit.
In this year’s Battle of the Maroons, the Anandians will be led by right-arm fast bowler Nethma Samaraweera, who is a third year player while Nalanda will be skippered by right-handed batsman Chanul Atukorala, who is a fourth year coloursman.
Ananda and Nalanda colleges, the two premier Buddhist schools in Sri Lanka, have so far produced the highest number (more than 55) of national cricketers to have represented Sri Lanka in international cricket. Six of them, the late Bandula Warnapura, Arjuna Ranatunga, Roshan Mahanama, Marvan Atapattu, Mahela Jayawardena and Dinesh Chandimal, have had the honour of leading the country.
It is worth noting that the first Test cricket captain of the country, the late Bandula Warnapura, was a proud product of Nalanda College, while Arjuna Ranatunga, who led the Sri Lankans in the famous World Cup victory in 1996, hails from Ananda.
At present Ananda leads big match series with 12 wins, while Nalanda has seven matches under their belt while 73 matches have ended in draws. The 93rd Battle of the Maroons cricket encounter will be broadcast live on Dialog Television channel number 140, and will also be available via live stream on the ThePapare.com and the Dialog ViU app.