He is of the view that there is no dearth of talent in the island but insists that harnessing that talent, through the proper channels is not that easy. Weerasinghe, points out that in his days (I can remember as a young fan of his, how he became the schoolboy cricketer, laying his first brick to a wonderful cricket career).
Weerasinghe recollects how the late F.C. de Saram tried to persuade him to join the SSC by sending the then owner of “Bogala Mines,” a good friend of his father, to meet his father but, that attempt failed because Dhanasiri wanted to play for his home side Panadura Sports Club in the “Daily News Trophy.” He says that the structure to reach to the top was in three tiers. A good schoolboy cricketer would first enter “The Daily News trophy” tournament and then go on to play for the “Donovan Andree.” And if good enough will graduate to the “Sara Trophy”, which was the plum.
After playing for Panadura in the “The Daily News Trophy” for one season, and scoring two centuries and one ninety, he decided to join the Bloomfield Cricket and Athletic Club to play in the Sara Trophy tournament. During the same period A.C.M Lafir who excelled as a batsman at St Anthony’s Kandy Joined Kandy Sports Club and played in the ‘Daily News Trophy’ tournament and also got two centuries and a ninety and walked straight into the All Ceylon team. Dhanasiri was modest enough to state that Lafir was the better of the two.
He also stresses that the talented school cricketers from outstations like Kandy, Kurunegala, Jaffna, Dambulla, Galle, Matara, etc should have well equipped cricket clubs to go to rather than uprooting themselves and coming all the way to Colombo where the competition is high.
A good example is Asela Gunaratne; he had to wait till he was 31 years to wend his way into the Sri Lanka team. If there was a top level club in Kandy, he would have joined that club and shone much earlier. One wonders how many Asela Gunaratne’s are perishing around the country. Another interesting point is have we got any cricket scouts to spot talent around the country? I bet India has. I personally think that the only other club apart from the Colombo who are feeding the Sri Lanka pool is Ragama Cricket Club. I am sure that club is under capable hands.
“It really is a pity that Sri Lankan cricket is in the ‘doldrums’ now, e.g. the visiting Indian team is making ‘mince meat out of them’. The Indians walked all over them because the Sri Lankan team behaved like a rudderless ship without a proper captain.” Again I quote once a team takes the field it is their business to perform well, forget about the higher ups, support staff and the selectors.
Getting back to the interview proper, during Dhanasiri’s tenure as the Ananda College cricket captain, they were the champion school in 1955, that team was star studded, with players of the calibre of Nimal Thammita, Palitha Premasiri, Mahinda Jayasinghe, A.P. Jayasinghe and Sarath Wijesinghe ably guided by the master cricketer Dhanasiri Weerasinghe.
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