Kishan Musafer the dashing CR and Sri Lanka winger-by Althaf Nawaz
Kishan Musafer
Source:Dailynews
Some yesteryear sportsmen are inspired by the players competing in the international arena. The game of rugby too has similar happenings where players in the international circuit are followed by certain local players who later blossom out as phenomenal players reaching the climax in the game.
Kishan Musafer was one of them whose rugby icon was an England player and had an illustrious career and finally ended up playing for the country. Kishan was born in 1974 in Colombo and his father is Nizam Musafer a retired Naval Officer and Zarina his mother is a housewife.
He has two brothers Roshan and Shihan who played rugby at competitive level. Kishan is a stockily built player who had a liking for sports from his younger days. He was enrolled at Wesley College, Colombo where he completed his academic career.
He engaged in several sporting disciplines including soccer, hockey and athletics at college. But rugby had a prominent place in his sporting career due to love and passion of the game. He launched his rugby career at school when he was 13 years old.
The unique feature of his career was when he had the opportunity of representing his ‘Alma Mater’ in the first XV rugby team at the early age of 15 years, under the guidance of coach late Zubair Doray (former Sri Lanka and CR full back) and captained the college rugby team in 1992.
During the final year of his college rugby career, he was also coached by many players including Rugby Legend Summa Navaratnam (former Sri Lanka and CR winger) and former Police skipper retired SSP S Sivendran. Apart from his initial boost towards handling the oval shaped ball, he was a great follower of Rory Underwood the Wing Three Quarter of England, who was one of the leading try scores in the International arena. This inspired him to play in his favorite position of winger.
During his tenure at college with the senior team he competed under the captaincy of Shalan Rupasinghe, Ali Noordeen, Hirosh Rupasinghe, Asela Hapugalle and Jeremy Daniel.
In 1994, he was selected to represent the Sri Lanka Schools Rugby team at the Pan Pacific Youth Rugby Championships which was held in Chinese Taipei, where Sri Lanka was placed sixth out of nine countries.
After an eventful tenure with his school, towards the end of 1994, he joined his favourite club CR and FC, under the leadership of Lasitha Gunaratne (Bonsa) and went on to represent them till 2004. During his career as a player was associated under the leadership of the following players Lasitha Gunaratne (1995), Viraj Prasantha (1996), Alfred Hensman, (1997), Champika Nishantha, (1998 and 1999) Savantha De Saram (2000), Asanga Rodrigo (2002) and Shamly Nawaz (2003).
He was appointed to lead the Longden Place club in 2001 and they won the Presidents Trophy defeating Police SC 25-16 in the final.
His rugby career spanned over a decade, played under several coaches such as C.P Abeygunawardena, Tavitha Tulagaese (Laga), Tony Amit, Asanga Seneviratne, Ana Saranapala, Grant Dwyer and Chandrishan Perera who helped in the coaching arena.
While he was playing for CR in 1997, was called to don the National jersey and represented Sri Lanka Rugby till 2004, both in XV a-side and seven-a-side tournaments in countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, England, Dubai and Australia. He also locked horns at the two Commonwealth Games held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 1998 and in Manchester, United Kingdom 2004 in the Sevens tournaments.
He had an unforgettable incident in his career playing against late All Blacks player Jonah Lomu at the Commonwealth Games in 1998 in Malaysia, which was a proud moment in his life. During his presence with the Sri Lanka team played under the captaincy of Priyantha Ekanayake, Viraj Prasantha, Asoka Jayasena and Haris Omar, which was rated as the golden era of Sri Lanka rugby. His first employment was at HNB and then joined the HSBC (Data processing unit), served at MAS Holdings and Thermo Plastics respectively.
Currently he is working at Amana Bank as a Relationship Manager at Prestige Banking Centre. While he was representing the former employers, he competed in the Mercantile Rugby Tournaments, and captained HNB and HSBC (HDPL) Rugby teams.
He holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of Cardiff (UK), and also is a certified trainer holding an Advanced Diploma in Teaching and Training (City and Guilds UK). His wife is Sharmila and has two sons Shevaan and Seshaan schooling at St. Peter’s College.
