Appreciation – Manik De S Wijeyeratne

My good friend and cricketing colleague Manik De S Wijeyeratne passed away quite suddenly on the 22nd of December. He wasn’t in the best of health during his latter days. Manik and I played in the same cricket team at St Joseph’s College, Colombo in the years 1970 and 1971. Manik also captained the St Joseph’s College cricket team in 1971 during the latter part of the season including the Joe Pete big match. In fact, one of the newspapers reported on the 10th of March 1971 “Manik De S Wijeyaratne celebrated his appointment as Captain of St Josephs with a flawless 51 runs in 83 minutes when opening the innings for his team against Trinity at Darley Road.” Manik came from a family of cricketers – the illustrious Wijeyeratne family where elder brother Lalit captained St Joseph’s in 1968, Manik captained in 1971 and Rohan (Rony) who also played with me and younger brothers Dilip and Harin all representing St Joseph’s at cricket and excelling in their teams.

Manik was an all-rounder, left-arm spin bowler, safe fielder, and a hard-hitting right-hand bat. I had the pleasure of opening the batting with him in 1971. Manik was a pinch hitter of yesteryear who could pummel any bowling attack in a few overs. He not only opened batting that year but also opened the bowling for the college team, especially in 1971.

Manik was a gifted cricketer, not flashy or flamboyant but a quiet achiever and a great team man. His cricketing career culminated with him being selected to tour India in 1969/70 with the star-studded Ceylon schools Under 19 team led by Mitra Wettimuny where his teammates were the likes of Bandula Warnapura, Duleep Mendis, Wendell Kelaart to name a few.

Manik gave up cricket prematurely after leaving school in 1971 to follow his passion in accounting and finance. He joined Turquand & Young (now known as Ernst & Young) and completed every accounting exam with flying colours and carrying away many prizes in accounting and qualified as a fully-fledged Chartered Accountant very early in life.

After he qualified Manik started his professional career in Sri Lanka, before moving overseas where he worked for several years in Bahrain, as CFO at Comship Al A’ali W.L.L a leading organization in Engineering and related services and in Pakistan with the IUCN country office. In later years he served as a non-executive director of HNB Assurance. He also carried out several assignments in Thailand and Switzerland with many well-known organizations in high-profile roles in Finance and Information Technology. He was a splendid influence wherever he worked as his professional skills and wide overseas experience made a big difference in his thought process in analyzing business issues etc. I too had the pleasure of working with him when we engaged Nexus Software where he was the Managing Director to carry out an IT assignment for us.

In later years Manik lived a quiet life, surrounded by many close friends and his dear siblings and their families who were his life. He was very quiet and unassuming and a loyal friend to many including to me. Whenever we met, he would always check on my family, naming every one of them and checking on their wellbeing. I did see Manik from time to time in the latter years when I did to visit him. And it is very sad that this wonderful human being is no longer in our midst. May his soul be granted eternal rest.

Rohan Fernando (Fido)