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(The cricket that was played then was very gentlemanly in and out of the field and the cricketing spirit prevailed as both teams tried very hard honorably to outbeat the other, but never was a moment of enmity, unseemly words or stares at opponents or loud shouts and appeals with hands held up at the umpire seen; umpire's word was law-a lesson for modern cricket now showing more discord and cricketing misbehaviour full of scorn, anger, revenge, emotional dishonour etc all displaying bad sportsmanship and showing us how 'cricket as it should not be played Cricket as a game for the glory of sport cannot be polluted by unfair victories or commercialised with much cash in it and also over - ridden with power- hungry (fake?) cricket controllers).

Let me now briefly state what we saw, how we played and conquered (true, lost by runs, yet won in spirit - It was in the year 1945 at the old SSC new turf wicket around the present Municipal grounds. Self was a GCE (AL) student and was privileged to play in the Peterite team. The one and only S.P. Foenander, the world renowned cricket correspondnet had given his commentaries on school cricket the schoolboys in particular read the impartial criticisms with interest.

As the St. Peter's buildings and grounds had been taken over by the military to run an army hospital, we had to manage our cricket on make shift cricket ground at Frazer Avenue, Dehiwela. Our team led by Anton Pertera had done very well against Royal, Ananda, Bendicts etc. As such we noticed that the Josephians led by Neil Weerasinghe were often seen observing the tactics, strengths and weak points of the stalwarts in the Peterites - Anton, Maurice, Sylvester, D. Walles and self were earmarked. As most of us were playing on turf for the first time we had two practices on the SSC turf. Herbert Wittachy, our coach and the great ruggerite who had a broken collarbone and our sporty Prefect of Games, Fr. Alex Ranasinghe who 'bribed', rather motivated us with ice-cream regularly were on the spot to inspire us to outplay the Josephians in the match.

The match evinced a lot of interest as young St. Peters, the erstwhile, then young sibling of St. Joseph's the very old brother, may beat Josephs for the first time. True it did not happen because the Josephians were well armed to withstand and outplay the Peterites who seemed to rests on their laurels, as quoted by the Observer and Times.

The great Dodwell Soysa was one of the Umpires- what a great disciplinarian and an impartial cricketing judge he was!! -a model for those who don the white coat now. Yes we lost the match as we could not reach the 250 odd runs left to us in the second innings. I still remember the great efforts made by our captain Anton with the bat and the off spinners bowled by his brother, Maurice could not disturb the great knocks by the Mels, Joe, Cletus etc and the wiles in bowling of Neil Weerasinghe etc. True self also failed - having stayed at the batting crease for more than an hour for a megre 20 runs going in at the fall of the 1st wicket- unfortunately my partner at the other end, De Zouza was feeling feverish and was not able to do much running between wickets. We lost more than 50 runs. The top spinners and legbreaks that I bowled on turf for the first time gave no return. At the end of the match we gave three hearty cheers to the Josephians and after a sumptuous dinner at the SSC pavilion we had all to walk back about 5 miles to Dehiwela as the private bus driver was not able to stay late hours.

In any case we enjoyed our journey back not as losers but having played a good match for the 'great scorer to record not how we won or lost but how we played the game'. The walk was made joyful by the song that had been coined for the match.

I can remember a few lines of the song we rendered 54 years ago:

``From the grounds of Frazer avenue, we have marched to the SSC

We have waged St. Peter's battles and marched to victory,

Admiration of our College, We are the finest in the fold

We have shouted out at every match one for all and all for one..''.