The Magpies Cricket Club in British Ceylon: An Exclusive & Peculiar Enclave

Michael Roberts

MAGPIES_FLG_CRICKET_1923

I came across this unusual photograph in loose-leaf form amidst my files and lata pata in my study.  David Sansoni in Sydney has rendered it more presentable, while Mevan Pieris has provided me with critical information on this unusual club and pointed me to pertinent data in that classic work by SS Perera reproduced as The Janashakthi Book of Sri Lanka Cricket (Colombo 1999).

There is intriguing irony in the action taken by an exclusive and elitist club within a colony where the British raj ruled the roost in racist manner to choose THE MAGPIE as its emblem. This picture, however, was taken in the years when the club had loosened its racism and admitted a few Ceylonese with the social and cricketing skills deemed vital for that day.

***** ******

MEMO from Mevan Pieris, April 2024 … with highlights imposed by Roberts

Dear Michael,

FL (Frank) Goonewardene captained the Thomian cricket team in 1899, and later became a prominent lawyer in Kandy. He awarded the best batsman’s batting shield, which is awarded each year at the prize day of S. Thomas’ College Mt Lavinia.

The Magpies (chocolate brown and blue coloured birds with a red beak) were a homeless cricket club, formed in 1912, with Walter Shakespeare, then Director of Carson & Co. Ltd, as the founder President. The club was a Whites only club, and played matches only against other whites only clubs, such as the Colombo Cricket Club, Darrawella Cricket Club, Dimbulla Cricket Club, Uva Gymkhana Club and the Ceylon Police made up of British Police Officers. However, about 1920, FL Goonewardene had put-together cricket teams comprising of Europeans to play against the Magpies.

It has been reported that FL Goonewardene and fellow Thomian cricketer Douglas de Saram were the first natives welcomed by the Magpies. FC de Saram and Ryle de Soysa who had graduated from Oxford in the 1930s too had been accommodated in subsequent years. In post-war years, the Magpies had run short of English cricketers and the club had lost meaning, and the majority of the cricketers were locals. FC de Saram was a key figure, until 1962, when the Magpies flew away for good (see SS Perera’s Janashakthi Book of Ceylon Cricket, pp 108-09, for a fuller account of Magpies).

Cheers

Comments by Michael Roberts, 22 April 2024

Along one dimension the tale of the MAGPIES displays an element of exclusivism within the broad swathe of racist exclusivism that prevailed in British Ceylon in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. That these superior beings chose the ubiquitous magpie as their emblem remains a puzzle.

Nevertheless, we readers today should be aware that the sporting arena was one field where the Ceylonese middle class elites were able to challenge the racist exclusivism and airs wielded by the British ruling classes. Some of the Ceylonese who had become filthy rich and fancied horseracing could purchase horses that competed for high stakes in the horseracing arena. Cricket provided another arena where the Ceylonese could take on the British cricketing clubs – with the Malay CC, the BRC, Colts, NCC and Tamil Union emerging as [mostly] ethnic conglomerations to challenge the Whites and the belief in racial superiority that was a pervasive dimension of colonial life THEN. The details of this challenge have been spelt out in the book People Inbetween (1989) pages …. presented by Roberts, Colin-Thome & Raheem.

The central point in this corpus of detail is that the Burghers and educated Ceylonese with the requisite skills (whether cricketing ability, wealth, knowledge, etc) were those who stepped out to take on the British ruling elements and their convictions of racial superiority. The sporting arena provide greater leeway for such confrontations than other fields.**

The tale of the Magpies provides a quaint side-stream within this broad and complex field of contestation. The coterie was just that: a colonial coterie within the ruling class order. This implies that the Ceylonese participating in that coterie were adjuncts of a sort in that order. So, let me mark the names appearing in the photograph:

Back Row: F. de Saram, VS De Kretser, O. Wright, AHR Joseph, G. Vanderstraaten

Middle Row:  BH Dunuville, JA Halangode, G. De Saram

Seated: Dr. VR Schokman, FL Goonewardene, DL De Saram, Dr John Rockwood

Front Row Ground: Edward Kelaart, V. Schokman

ETHNIC BREAKDOWN  =  07 Burghers; 03 Burgher-Sinhala combo*; 02 Sinhala; 01 Tamil.

** However, the Sinhala Buddhist and Hindu Tamil middle classes were sturdily hostile to the evangelical operations of the Christian missionaries and their superior airs. The vociferous and even virulent resistance from the mid 19th century has received widespread historical documentation.

*** The De Saram lineage constitutes a mix of the Sinhala and the Burgher. Note, too, that FC de Saram opted to join the Sinhalese Sports Club and not the NCC or the BRC. Indeed, he was a stalwart supporter even after his highly successful playing days.

FC ponders as he watches a cricket match at the SSC in the mid-1960s [probably after his release from jail for participation in the aborted coup d’etat of early 1962]