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Death of a Trinity Double Lion
Tuesday, 21 November 2006 - 5:18 AM SL Time
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Lionel Wadsworth died last night (Sunday) in London from a terminal illness he bore heroically.
Lala as he was known to all and sundry was a sportsman of the first drawer. He first played as a fifteen year old fledgling in A. P. Fernando`s crack cricket team of 1945 which had in the ranks the redoubtable C. N. `Pittu` Schokman, Asoka Yatawara. Asoka Imbuldeniya, S. B. Pilapitiya, Frank Sirimanne, Mervyn Wanduragala and Hugh Molegoda. As a callow youth in this Herculean company he shared with his left arm spin 5 wickets for 47 Vs Wesley.
He won his Colours in `46 and went on to captain the team in `48 and `49 in which year he was awarded the cricket Lion for sheer brilliance. In his first year of captaincy he scored 55 runs against Wesley and although there were some sterling cameo knocks it is the only one over the half-century mark. Lakshman Jayakody. Jim Bandaranayake, Michael Schokman, Eustace Rulach and Percy Deheragoda are his surviving team mates.
His other big hauls make impressive reading:-
1947 5 for 34 Vs SJC, 5 for 08 Vs SACK, `48/5 for 70 Vs STC, `49/5 for 30 Vs Wesley, 6 for 52 Vs Royal, 5 for 73 Vs Royal, 5 for 90 Vs STC, 5 for 37 Vs SACK.
In his final year he fared exceptionally well against all the schools with whom Trinity had fixtures and was awarded the Bowling prize as another feather in his cap.
As an eighteen year old in 1948 he had the distinction of captaining Combined Colleges Vs West Indies as well as playing for All-Ceylon against the same visitors.
But Lala had not done with soldiering. He took to rugger. He won his straight Lion, having been awarded Colours in the same year. His fellow Lions were K. Arumugam and C. J. Senanayake. The boys who as an unfledged fifteen year old would have thought with Robert Frost that he had `miles to go and promises to keep` honoured all his whims and fancies.
I wrote to him only last month bidding him to keep his courage with positive thinking but when you have to go, you have to go. That is the eternal dogma. But I am sure that like. Francis Bacon, Lala would have in his final moments thought upon death and would have found it `the least of all evils.`
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