Kandy’s Ranjith Colombage can be rated as one of the top class junior cricket coaches. A product of St. Sylvester’s College he has produced top cricketers . He is especially a fine Junior Cricket coach. Ranjith should be thankful to his first coach Bertie Nillegoda a product of Dharmarja College who was his coach and later principal of St.Sylvester’s College.
Ranjith hails from a sporting family His father Edmund Colombge a product of St.Thomas’ College Matara was a great cricket follower and gave a big hand for Ranjith in sports, then his late brother Edward, and he were the opening bowlers of the Sylvestrians. Ranjith played for St. Sylvester’s from 1972 to 1973 and he was also a top hockey player, Footballer and athlete. At cricket he was a talented right arm medium pace bowler and a middle order batsman . When he was in top form in bowling he was picked to represent the Central Province Schools led by Jayantha Monnekulame, and his other opening bowling partner was Dharmaraja College’s Mahinda Pethiyagoda They played against the Australian school boys team led by Robert Goldin at Asgiriya grounds, In that team Australians had Graeme Yallop who later played for Australia in test and one dayers and the fiery pace trio of Tom Gillogly.Michael Lang and John Hendrie
He won colours for cricket and hockey at school, and also played hockey for Kandy school side. For his good playing was selected to play for Ceylon schools and led the Kandy district side at the junior and senior nationals. He was also in the Sri Lanka hockey pool.
Soon after school Ranjith played club cricket for Kandy CC and hockey for Youth SC Kandy and Grasshoppers SC Colombo. He joined the Kandy Municipal Council play grounds department as a play ground instructor and gave his best and did his part also by playing cricket, football and hockey for the Municipal Council teams. During his Municipal days he followed a Cricket Coaching Course conducted by the Board of Control for Cricket of Sri Lanka under W.A.N. Silva, Ranjit Fernando and Abu Fuard in 1984. While getting a good knowledge in cricket coaching he took up coaching the junior sides at his school St. Sylvester’s, St.Anthony’s College, Sri Sumangala (St.Paul’s) college and at present is coaching the juniors at St. Benedicts College Ampitiya, and has produced top class players. As the Antonian junior coach he guided them to win the under 13 all island championship for four consecutive years from1995 to 1998.
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