Former Methodist High School Moratumulla and Adastrians (Sri Lanka Air Force) Cricketer M K P Nimal Lakshman Perera known among his Air Force Colleagues as “Pema Perera” is no more. He died at the age of 78 years after a brief illness.
Nimal who hails from Moratuwa commenced his schooling at Prince of Wales and after a short period he joined Methodist High School and played in the under 12, 14, 16 second eleven cricket teams and went on to captain the first eleven in 1961. When Annesley J de Mel was at the helm of the school.
He was a fine right hand opening batsmen and a good wicket keeper. He was a member of the cricket pool of the National Schools Cricket Association which toured Australia in 1960 but he could not gain a place.
After his school career he joined the Royal Ceylon Air Force in 1960 and had his military and Combat and Trade Training at Singapore Air Force Base.
He served as an Air Frame Technician at Katunayake and left after serving in the Air Force for five years in 1965.
Throughout his career he represented his unit and the Air Force in Division Three (Daily News Trophy). In his last season in 1964/65 he played under Aubrey Ebert and his other team mates were W S Silva, Gamini Abeysekera Christy Fernando, Nimal Mediwaka, Anton Issacs, Weeratunge Solomons (senior), S Dharmaraja, Rajah Wickramasinghe, Nihal Ranasinghe and myself to mention a few.
He along with the writer is holding a record for the second wicket in division three for the Air Force when the two of us put on 131 runs against Nomads Sports Club.
He opened batting and scored 76 runs while the writer's contribution was 110 runs .
His funeral took place at the midst of a large gathering at St Peter's Church Cemetery after the service on 15th July 2018 with Air Force honours.
There is a saying, “Old soldiers never die they just fade away”. May the turf lie lightly on my cricketing friend”.
0 comments:
Post a Comment