A Message in Facebook from the Retd Warden, Fr. Marc Billimoria. early March 2026
It is one year this week since I was part of organizing this spectacular sporting event – the blue ribbon and quintessential Big Match, the Battle of the Blues, the Royal-Thomian Cricket encounter, for the last time as Warden. The run up to the event and its aftermath, (particularly in the face of a loss) are equally or even more stressful for those in the ‘hot seats’ at both Mount Lavinia and Reid Avenue, the Warden and the Principal, due to so many ‘behind-the-scenes goings-on’ as well as the expectations of so many different individuals and groups, such as the unfair and unrealistic expectation that amateur schoolboy cricketers will play like professionals or the undue pressure on them to win at any or all cost.
Looking back at my years being directly involved with organizing thirteen Big Matches, I cannot believe we came through without losing our sanity! The Covid years were particularly testing – but we still prevailed despite all the pre-match issues that we faced. There are many pundits, armchair critics and ‘keyboard warriors’ at this time of the year that imagine that their opinion MUST be taken on anything and everything. In reality, more often than not, it is those in the ‘hot seat’ who have to make the agonizingly tough calls, after many long and sleepless nights, endless meetings and discussions.
My days of being part of organizing a Big Match are over. To him who was my right hand and now sits in the ‘hot seat’ at Mount Lavinia, the baton has now been passed along with all the things that go with it – the good, the bad and the ugly. The College is blessed to have him at its helm. I have no doubt he will be strong and of good courage, standing firm in the face of challenge, and that he will remember the almost Churchillian advice of the Warden of our schooldays: ‘Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem’. Big Matches come and go but the College, well, the College will always remain and embody its motto – Esto Perpetua!
