CricInfo Home
News Home

NEWS FOCUS
Rsa in Pak
NZ in India
Zim in Aus

Domestic
Other Series

Imagine in rural areas if crane watching is considered childish and on a World Cup day, the national gross productivity goes down and people are not seated at their work places, then to be gleeful at cricketers clad in pure white: or else adults watching cricket is childish. Even in rural areas nowadays no one is devoid of this childish communion.

The village lads have left paddy fields where chalky cranes pecked for worms to be sagacious by collecting information on cricket.

But then a barrier was laid before them, it was the Whiteman's language, not his sport that enthraled them.

Newton Gunatileke was engaged in crashing this barricade for those lads, may be among them sprouts of future world class cricket players would emerge. His monthly ``Cricket Lova'' (the cricket world) covered all current events of cricket in Sinhala right throughout.

Newton was a human dynamo. He was stocky and well rooted in indigenous manners, and his lips were ever reddened by chewing betel, and he was clad in a neat chalky sarong and a national upper jacket with short sleeves. His pace was quick. Given to talk of cricket in Sinhala he was good at it; though cricket is imported, let us import it in Sinhala had been his prime move. To cross the Rubicon he moved with a gusto of a fast bowler.

Perhaps in bowling, one or two may miss yet persistence could move one to blow the wickets. Until Newton's monthly ``Cricket Lova'' embraced the interest of the readers he had to endure his previous unsuccessful attempts. He was the first person that ever edited and launched a cricket magazine in Sinhala.

Having abandoned the masonry skills which he cultivated soon after his adolescence with a tint of leftist politics, Newton was a voracious reader in Sinhala that habit led him to a writing career. If Arnold Wesker was made to write The Wesker Trilogy from kitchen, of a restaurant, was not a Newton's gravity capable to ease the sport in Sinhala?

If the Whiteman's sport has made children dismiss their minds from milky cranes why could not his language be well rooted among them? Perhaps language was more susceptible for politics in Sri Lanka than it was to the games.

Until it is established in far off hamlets, lads need people like Newton Gunatileka who would move with a gusto of a fast bowler.