Ranjith still looked fit and dapper at the age of 78.He has settled down in Kurunegala now. Ranjith Malewana was a talented sportsman, who missed representing Ceylon at cricket by a hairs breadth, He was a brilliant medium pace swing bowler. He was also multi talented. He was a superb winger for Old Joes and won Public Schools colours in athletics. He was also a good Hockey player for St Joseph’s.
CATHOLIC CLASH ENDS IN A DRAW-The Sunday Times April 7th 1957
Splendid pace bowling by Malewana
Brilliant pace bowling by Ranjith Malewana who established a new record-the most number of wickets by a Josephian in an innings for the series.Malewana on his performance yesterday on an unresponsive pitch at the Oval proved that he is easily the best school boy bowler with the new ball, and would have returned better figures had he received more support from the Josephian fielders.
The Sunday Times further reported-Bowling to a perfect length Malewana tore through the Peterite batting ranks with the finest spell of pace bowling seen in years.It was all the more creditable as he was able to extract very little help from the wicket.
Malewana finished up with a bag of 8 for 57 in the Peterites first innings, the highest numer of wickets captured in an innings by a Josephian bowler in the series.
Ranjith joined Walker and Sons as an engineering assistant and captained the team and won the Merchantile (A) division, C.I.GuNASEKERA played under him.C.I.was a simple guy stated Ranjith.
Ranjith then joined Bloomfield and against all the odds won The Sara Trophy in 1964.He had an ideal pace bowling partner in late Norton Fredrick, that season they were so deadly, not a single team got more than 110 against them, they also had that on the spot maestro late Noel Perera. Dhanasiri Weerasinghe also joined them later.Ranjith could swing the ball at will and Norton was fiery.Noel was the ideal foil he bowled a nagging length.
The champion Bloomfield team had Mahinda Wijesinghe a fantastic cricketer who never gave his wicket away, Lucky Abeywardene a crack opening bat and later on Dhanasiri joined and batted two down.Ranjith was an allround sportsman he was good at soccer, athletics, football and hockey, whilst he was at Walker and Sons and Colombo Commercials he represented them in all those sports.When it came to cricket he was rather unfortunate to miss the bus although he was a poolist till the very end when they pruned the the team down to the last 20.Dhanasiri Weerasinghe was the chairman of the selectors together with C.T.Schafter, H.I.K.Fernando and Sam Abeysekera.This team was to tour England in 1964 but it was aborted.Those days Ranjith Malewana was the best swing bowler in the country surpassing P.I.Peiris et al.Ranjith stated that Schafter wanted P.I. INSTEAD OF HIM but was overruled by Dhanasiri and H.I.K. and as a result Schafter resigned.
Ranjith noted that a lot of pulling was going on behind the scenes and coming from Bloomfield did not help Ranjith’s chances at all.Dhanasiri was getting calls from all angles to include Gamini Goonasena as captain and C.E.M.Ponniah and Old Wettimuny wanted his boys although they were school boys then to be in the tour party, reminisced Ranjith.
Ranjith Malewana had only one proper coach and it was late Anthony Abeysinghe, he had a good rapport with him.Abeysinghe gave Rangith a valuable tip and that was to maintain his balance at the point of his delivery. As a result his line and length was impeccable.
Malewana commented that at Sri Lanka Cricket players were manipulated by the management, so that they performed to suit the bookies, the SLC were so subtle stated Ranjith, that the players were unaware of this. Ranjith also commented that Jayananda Warnaweera was preparing pitches to suit his bowling at Galle and he was asked to report to the ICC and Warnaweera avoided facing them.
Ranjith specifically stated that match fixers will ask the bowler to bowl a wide to suit the bookies. The business men get into it and manipulate.He agreed that there is no remedy.
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