Great cricketers have played in Kandy at the picturesque Trinity College grounds at Asgiriya. This ground has helped sports in a big way, especially cricket. Most of the world’s great cricketers who visited Sri Lanka have played at Asgiriya.
Some of the great cricketers from our country and overseas have played at Asgiriya. This ground came alive due to the helping hand given by the white sahibs of the early days. In 1910 they gave Trinity College permission to put up their own grounds. That was during Rev. A.G. Fraser’s tenure as the principal. He was instrumental in construction of the venue. Trinitians started work in 1910 and it was opened in 1915 by Sir Robert Chalmers, the Governor of Kandy on 15th of January 1915. The first inter-school match to be played at Asgiriya was between Trinity College and S. Thomas’ College Mount Lavinia on 24th and 25th of February 1915. This game was won by the Trinitians by an innings. Prior to Asgiriya being built, Trinity played their cricket at the Bogambara Grounds.
When he assumed office as Principal in 1904, Rev, A.G. Fraser, saw the lack of a suitable playing with 400 students out of them 200 were boarders. The school needed an suitable cricket field, and the possible site was at Asgiriya which was 300 yards away from the school, through the temple and a five minute walk.
This land belonged to the temple and was an abandoned waste land of the War Department. Notice of Rev. Fraser’s application on behalf of Trinity College, for the lease of the land called the Military Grounds was gazetted in Ceylon Government Gazette on 2nd May 1923. Permission was granted to the school to commence work, pending the formal execution of an indenture of lease. The Government Agent at the time had said that the annual lease rental would be Rs. 30 per annum.
Constructing the ground took five long years from 1909 to 1915. After 67 years, when Old Trinitian Gamini Dissanayake took over the leadership of Sri Lanka Cricket, he used modern machinery and within a short period of 150 days made it into an International Cricket Stadium. That was in 1981. Late Gamini Dissanayake was the first to put sod to start work and on 5th January 1982, the late President J. R. Jayewardene - a fine cricketer himself at Royal, ceremonially opened the stadium.
It was during the tenure of late principal Rev. Dr. W.G. Wickremasinghe the stadium became a reality. Trinitians of all walks of life extended their fullest support to Gamini Dissanayke to bring the ground to international standard.
A modern pavilion, which has three floors, was constructed - ground floor exclusively for players, umpires and officials. The other two floors to accommodate over thousand five hundred spectators. A well equipped media box and a modern scoreboard was also provided. The turf wicket was prepared by T. M. Omardeen under the supervision of Abu Fuard who coordinated on behalf of the Cricket Board. Old Royalist Shaw Wilson who was Trinity cricket coach at that time, became the first curator and later Trinity’s Alex Lazarus was there for a quite a sometime. Late J.R. Jayewardene opened the pavilion in 1982.
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