Earth’s Greatest Rivalry-By Uthpala Wijesuriya Source:Island The Royal-Thomian or the Battle of the Blues, the world’s second oldest uninterrupted cricket battle, will unveil for the 144th consecutive year this week. The encounter pits the boys bearing the crests of the Elephant and Palm Tree against those bearing the Cross and Dove. The Royal-Thomian is in many ways greater and more epic than the three matches that can be most favorably compared to it: St Peters – Prince Alfred in Australia, Eton – Harrow in Britain, and the Ashes. This is particularly so in the annals of schoolboy cricket in Sri Lanka. Indeed, the history of Sri Lankan cricket cannot be written without the Battle of the Blues. ...

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The US Ambassador’s Enthusiasm for the Aragalaya-by Michael Roberts Source:Thuppahis Malinda Seneviratne … whose title runs thus “Ambassador Chung and Xeroxable Change” …. with highlighting emphasis being impositions by The Editor Thuppahi Aragalaya. Translatable as revolt, uprising, protest, agitation, struggle or even insurrection. Aragalaya is singular, but considering statements and actions it was certainly not marked by concert, ideological agreement, unity of purpose etc. Julie CHUNG, US Ambassador in Colombo Eclecticism was the signature of the rumbling. There was mumbling, nothing more, about system-change, but a revolution it certainly was not. So, aragalaya: singular; aragala: plural. The latter is the better descriptive. And perhaps it is exactly this eclectic and disjointed character that forced the agitators to dilute whatever revolutionary fervour there may have been to a project that targeted an individual and once that ouster was obtained shift focus to another individual. ...

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Between romance and revolution: Nanda Malini and Politics of Pavana-By Uditha Devapriya Source:Island Nanda Malini has a great deal to do with my being a Sri Lankan. How could one grow up here and not hear that voice? Nearly every radio station plays it every hour or so; unless you turn the radio off, you can’t escape her. Even then her voice creeps up somewhere. Ever ubiquitous, she makes herself heard in the most unpredictable moments. As with Victor Ratnayake, everything she has sung has become so embedded in our collective consciousness that we can’t ignore it. This has mostly been on account of how she has brought two diametrically opposed themes, love and politics, together. If it’s hard to talk about either without remembering a line from her songs, it’s because she’s made the transition from love to revolution so seamlessly that there’s really no other artiste from here ...

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The New Old Left turns 50-by Malinda Seneviratne Source:Island Revolutionaries, self-styled or otherwise, are hard to imagine as old people, the exception of course being Fidel Castro. Castro grew old with a Cuban Revolution that has demonstrated surprising resilience. Che Guevara was effectively stilled, literally and metaphorically when he was just 39, ensuring iconic longevity — and the wild haired image with a star pinned on a beret is a symbol of resistance and, as is often the case, used to endorse and inspire things and processes that would have horrified the man. Daniel Ortega at 75 was a revolutionary leader who reinvented himself a few decades after the Sandinistas’ exit was effectively orchestrated by the USA in April 1990. He’s changed and so has the Sandinistas. Revolutionary is not an appropriate descriptive for either. ...

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