As a kid studying at the Lawrence school, Lovedale, I used to be crazy about cricket. The fact that my father was a well known cricketer in the Madras ( of those days) of his youth made this more than an interest- it became a passion.
In my childhood, I recall spending hours on the scrap books maintained by my father and his brothers in their childhood, seeing newspapers clippings of the feats of Don Bradman and Len Hutton. From a relatively young age, I was conversant with cricket records and one that I well remember was that for the 4th wicket – 411 by Peter May and Colin Cowdrey. This was made against the West Indies way back in 1957.
Records, they say, are meant to be broken but such big records last an extraordinarily long time. It was delightful therefore to see the Sri Lankans- captain Mahela Jayawardene and Thilan Samaraweera break this long standing record – of 52 years-recently
Against Pakistan in Karachi recently, the pair put on a staggering 437 run stand. Jayawarane scored 240 and Samaraweera 231 to take Sri Lanka to a very imposing total of 644-7 declared.
Surely, breaking this record will take some doing.
