Michael Patrick O’Leary
I do not do much new writing these days but I do a lot of remembering. I have been reading a book about Forgetting by Gabriel Josipovici, but I have forgotten where I put it. Also have Ivan Illich’s H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness and Lewis Hyde’s A Primer for Forgetting and A Sivanandan’s (met him in 1968) When Memory Dies and Forgetting by Scott A Small.
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In 1923 Ceylon was a different place to the Sri Lanka of today. The land was ruled by the Empire’s masters, ensconced in their ‘Britishers Only’ Colombo Club near Galle Face Green. The Ceylonese had, however, formed their own rival Orient Club located near the racecourse.
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Gamini Seneviratne** whose chosen title is “The US, ISRAEL & WMD”…. with the highlighting being the author’s emphasis
It was just twenty years ago that George W Bush of the USA declared that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) that threatened the security of The Free World. Today we are presented with a whole range of similar – and much worse – fictions by and on behalf of Israel. It is impossible to find words in this language to describe those usurpers to the land of Palestine and their atrocities, now freshly renewed, against her people. And they receive the continuing, totally indefensible, support of the western media which exerts itself to obfuscate what should be clear to the whole world: the intention of “Israel” to achieve its Final Solution, a la that of Hitler and of Nazis everywhere, through genocide.
VISIT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnaacT4eBrA
An old video featuring Israeli journalist Gideon Levy discussing the long-standing Israel-Palestine conflict has gone viral on social media. The journalist Gideon Levy’s insights on the situation have proven to be prophetic, given the current state of affairs in the region. Israel’s ongoing conflict with Hamas and the resulting devastation has raised concerns worldwide. Gideon Levy is an award winning journalist.
ADDENDUM from Thuppahi: ………….. “WHERE the mainstream Western Press, for the most part, emphasizes this message ad nauseum.”
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After a remarkable feat of batsmanship on one leg that brought him 200 runs and secured an Australian victory against Afghanistan at the World Cup match in Mumbai, Glenn Maxwell went on his knees in puja to the all-time Indian great Sachin Tendulkar …… 
Michael Roberts, reproducing an article written in early December 2003 and presented with the same title in Roberts, Essaying Cricket. Sri Lanka and Beyond, Colombo, Vijitha Yapa Publishers, 2006, pp 107-111 …. with the title inspired by Lord Superior aka Andrew Marcano’s famous calypso line in praise of the marvellous West Indian spin-twins Ramadhin and Valentine: viz, “Cricket Luv’ly Cricket”
In stressing the antithesis to that ditty, I am directed by two awful acts of sportmanshp recently: namely, (A) Mohammed Siraj’s verbal intimidation of Charitha Asalanka with implicit support from skipper Sharma; and (B) skipper Shakib Al Hasan’s position in sticking to the technicalities so as to dismiss Angelo Matthews.
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Michael Roberts
My upbringing was heavily impregnated with cricket and its sporting values. The practices of sledging and verbal one-upmanship in order to unsettle batsmen was simply unthinkable to those so nourished. When Sri Lanka’s team under Arjuna Ranatunga had a prolonged tour of Australia in 187, they happened to spend a lot of time in Adelaide. I was introduced to Arjuna and Ruwan Kalpage at a dinner at the house of Tilak Gunasekera (alas not more with us) and his wife Dawn (nee Buultjens). There I received first-hand tales of the degree to which Australian cricket was, so to speak, impregnated with the sledging form of one-upmanship.
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Andrew Fidel Fernando, in ESPNcricinfo, 6 November 2023……… where the title runs thus: “Mathews on timed-out dismissal: ‘Never seen a team or a player stoop so low'”,
“It was obviously disgraceful from Shakib and Bangladesh,” Mathews says of the incident. In almost certainly the most explosive press conferences of his career, Angelo Mathews called the actions of opposition captain Shakib Al Hasan and the Bangladesh team “obviously disgraceful”. He said he’d “never seen a team or player stoop so low” in his 15 years of playing international cricket. It was “unfortunate” his helmet strap broke in a match against Bangladesh because he doesn’t think “any other team would do that”, he added.
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Richard Simon has produced “A definitive social, cultural and political history of S. Thomas’ College, Sri Lanka”
S. Thomas’ College, founded by the first Anglican Bishop of Colombo in 1851, is arguably the greatest and most influential boys’ school in modern Lankan history. An acknowledged nursery of the country’s elite, this tropical facsimile of an English public school has produced four Prime Ministers and hundreds of other figures of national importance, wielding an enduring influence on the society, culture and politics of the country.
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Michael Roberts
This essay was drafted on 25 April 2001 and appeared in print-form in Roberts, Essaying Cricket, Sri Lanka and Beyond, Colombo, Vijitha Yapa Publishers, 2006, pp. 98-102. The highlighting here is additional emphasis in 2023 by Roberts as Editor, Thuppahi.
The ICC has moved, rather belatedly, to invest umpires with the power to penalise cricketers for unsportsmanlike behaviour. I suggest, here, that the penalty should be more severe. Rather than reducing or adding runs, the penalty should be a sin-bin for one player, preferably a specific offender or the worst offender in the instance of, say, excessive appealing. Indeed, I would go further: for excessive appealing, the captain of the fielding side should be sent to the sin-bin for a specific amount of time, say, one hour.
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thuppahi
