Ok, let’s explain. A year or so ago the incoming Royal OBA (old boys association) president had a brilliant idea to organise a tennis tournament between old boys of all Lankan schools in Sydney. He had read somewhere that tennis increases life span by about 10 years. Since the old boys were old, that sounded like a win-win. Unfortunately given how old these boys are, the plan was forgotten even before the president finished verbalising the thought.
Then one of the old boys who had nothing better to do decided to review meeting minutes and asked what action had been taken about extending the life span of old boys. This led to some serious discussion, starting on WhatsApp and ending in a Castle Hills pub, where all good (and mainly bad) ideas are drowned in amber liquid.
On this particular night, as the drinks flowed, the boys made the mistake of planning a tennis tournament on the back of a coaster. It was decided that this should be done quickly before the boys misplaced the coaster.
Further WhatsApp messages were fired to other SL school OBA presidents. Six schools said they could probably supply warm bodies to stand behind tennis rackets. That’s when Royal went into a panic and elected a captain whose only qualification was that he could stand straight (sort of) and had been to Royal, a long long time ago.
He was ordered to assemble a team. He proposed a couple of names (who shall remain nameless to avoid a class action law suit) and was met with “aiyo, my grandmother can play better than him”. Upon calling these grandmothers, they provided the following response “aiyo putha (son), I haven’t touched my racket since 1897”.
The Royalist started drawing straws among committee members and a few unlucky guys were told to get themselves a racket and shoes. When they asked about the rules of tennis, one of the younger lads launched Chat GPT and started chatting like an expert to an audience that was snoring.
A practice session was organised. One of the guys showed up in hiking boots. He was told to take a hike and was last spotted in the Blue Mountains by a rescue helicopter. Another showed up with his grand mother’s 1897 racket. He was replaced with his grandmother. A coach was recruited and a tennis boot camp followed. At the end of the boot camp, the captain was seen on his phone praying for a miracle.
Most of the other schools were in a similar predicament. That’s when another great idea was hatched. A message was circulated saying there will be biriyani and beers.
Hey presto, old boys (some who had never been seen before) started emerging out of the wood work claiming they had once made it through the first week of Wimbledon. They were recruited. Only later did the recruiters learn that these fellows only watched the first week of Wimbledon on TV because they didn’t realise there was a second week.
The day before the tournament, the Royal coach sent a message to the team asking them to properly hydrate to avoid cramping. The team promptly cracked open a couple of bottles of single malt whiskey. One was heard saying “ade, no wonder tennis increases life span by 10 years”.
On the day of the tournament, the brains trust called an emergency meeting at 5am to discuss strategy. Unfortunately they all slept till 7am, so the emergency meeting is still pending.
But the Royal skipper had an epiphany in the shower. Now this is the least likely Royalist (of all Royalist to have walked this earth) to have an epiphany. Pulmonary embolism may be, but epiphany, no way. He doesn’t even know how to spell that word. And yet he realised that we had been going about sport and tournaments wrongly. He realised that having to win to be happy meant he would never be happy, so he decided it would be much better to be happy about losing. He couldn’t for the life of him understand why nobody had thought of that earlier. How many more people in the world would be happy…
So this bright spark gathered everyone at the tournament before the start to share his epiphany. He encouraged everyone to lose. The brains trust were left scratching their heads, but realised it may work in Royal’s favour, so they kept quiet.
Format
The tournament proved to be more exciting than a Formula 1 race. The format was simple. Each team had elected three pairs of doubles and seeded them from 1 to 3. Each seeded pair played an eight-game set against the same seeds of every other school. Each game won was added to the school tally and the school with the most games won at the end was the winner.
Only five schools had enough players for a team on the day, which meant there were four sets for each pair of each school and it also meant each school had a BYE round.
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Team Captains — (from left) Ananda Amaranath (S Thomas), Ishantha Samarasinghe (Trinity), Neshan Dias (Royal), Samitha Ranaweera (Ananda), Sudesh Wijesingha (St Joseph’s); Picture by Navaka
What about the tennis
Royal had a first round BYE. This set the Royal captain into a panic when he saw no points on the board for Royal after round 1. He was spotted asking the tournament director who had invited team BYE, saying he had never heard of that school before. The match referee asked him to file a complaint in one of many dust bins.
Joe’s were on top with 17 points post round 1 thanks to captain Sudesh’s complex strategy meeting pre-match. Ananda was second on the leaderboard thanks to having a number 1 seed (Sumitha) who had represented Lanka at the Davis Cup and his partner Chinthana who had played mercantile tennis.
After round 2, Joe’s and Ananda were tied at 28 in first place. Thomians with young guns Kohulan and Fred as their number 1 pair gave the Royalist a tennis lesson, taking the set 6–2. Royal has invited them to run the next Royal boot camp. Round 3 ended with Ananda taking the lead with 39 games won, followed by 34 for the Thomians.
Royal managed to move from the bottom of the ladder to 4th place with 24 games won, only because Trinity was essentially a man down. Trinity showed true Trinity spirit when captain Ishantha took a dive on the court forgetting he was not at the Kellyville pool and although he struggled to grip his racket, he soldiered on like an Olympian.
With Royal well behind on the leaderboard, the captain was seen searching for the captain of team BYE to ask him to thrash Ananda and S Thomas the way Royal was thrashed. When he couldn’t find team BYE, he reminded his opponents that the objective was to lose to be happy. They told him to file a complaint.
Round 4 results came in, putting Thomians in the lead at 48 and Royal (42) had edged past Ananda on 39 thanks to team BYE that was having a stellar tournament. Team BYE had yet to lose a game. It was a bit like the Royal cricket side, where the BYEs often scored the most runs.
Royal needed to win 7 games in the last round to pass the Thomians that faced team BYE, while Ananda needed 10 games or more to get in the lead. It was down to Ananda and Royal. Captain Royal was biting his nails and praying for a miracle.
Somehow, Royal managed their best performance in the last set by winning a total of 20 games to Ananda’s 16 games across all three pairs of players. This put Royal on top.
When captain Royal learnt this, he was seen with head in hands wondering how he had even manage to fail at losing. He had a life time of perfecting that skill and yet he failed to lose when it mattered. He started protesting that surely team BYE was the winner because they had not lost a single game.
The brains trust called him a genius. He was seen filing another complaint.
The biriyani was whacked quick fast and the beer flowed faster. A new tennis community was born. Tennis among the SL old boys in Sydney won the day. They are all looking forward to at least 10 more years of this. Getting all the schools together proved to be the true genius. Who would have thought. Game, set, match. BYE for now.
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Royal College Team — (from left) Kesara, Chanaka, Darshan, Timothy, Neshan (front), Uthayan (back), Sanjeewa, Nandhan, Radesh; Picture by Navaka
