He coached many a ''star'' such as Ian Pieris, Michael Tissera, Anura Tennekoon and Duleep Mendis to name a few. In his three decades of coaching he nurtured and trained many a champion outfit. Some that come to mind are the sides of 1964 led by the successful P.N.W. (Premalal) Goonesekera and the immensely successful team of 1966 ably captained by the genial Anura Tennekoon. A decade later he produced a talented squad skippered by the affable Sasi Ganeshan that went on to win the award for the Best School team (all-island). Two years earlier he had trained this side under that superb all round sportsmen Dayalan Supramaniam to clinch the All-Island Under 16 title. The first eleven consisted of players like Guy de Alwis and Saliya Ahangama who won Test caps and Ishak Sahabdeen who represented Sri Lanka in one-dayers. ''Lassie'' was a quiet, unassuming person but woe unto those who broke the rules, for his sharp retort ''Monkey'' to them brought these miscreants to task. He was a good husband, a loving father and an exemplary gentleman. He was often criticised as coach but in the true Christian spirit he would bear it up with a ''Father forgive them for they do not know what they do''. He has fought the good fight, completed the race and played a good innings.
May his soul rest in peace.
Lassie's genius
Ian Jayasinha
This article appeared in 1981 in the 'Ceylon Observer' when Lassie retired from service from S. Thomas' college, Mt. Lavinia. The article has a few additions after his death. Lassie Abeywardene reached the Elysium fields last Monday.
Some people are eternal. They occupy a special niche in time and space. Their shadowy figures haunt the once familiar ground. They are like the grass that grows season after season even though the bats and pads are stashed in the corner of one's bed room. Such a person is Lassie Abeywardene, the former Thomian staffer and Cricket Coach par excellence, who gracefully carried over his bat at S. Thomas' College, Mt. Lavinia after some 40 years of wedlock to his alma mater.
It was a sentimental parting when I read that Lassie was retiring. Few people can evoke such a vicarious sensation.
Lassie was our cricket coach from our under - 14 days, when Don Bradman strode the cricketing fields like a colossus. It's a long time since then, when I captained the team.
It was on the small club grounds that this diminutive figure first taught us to handle a bat - the forward drive, the backward defensive and a repertoire of other strokes - which he made us execute to perfection. He kept on throwing the ball at us for hours, annoyed when our heads were not in line with the ball. That was Lassie the perfect coach.
Lassie carried with him a puckish boyish delight. This was the affinity the boys found in him. He was always ready to answer any of the numerous questions put to him.
I met him, the other evening at the Old Thomians' swimming club, where he is wont to visit and satiate his thirst to talk cricket. there he was squinting his eyes, chain smoking enjoying his drink, in the midst of relating a story of how at an exciting stage of a Royal- Thomian, the opposing coach came up to the Thomian dressing room and asked him whether he was going to declare or continue to bat. ''You will have to wait for the captain to decide'' that was his prompt reply.
What was his best Royal-Thomian? When Shanti Kumar captained the team and Bradman Weerakoon hit that famous six to midwicket off the balling of Gamini Goonesena, the former Royal and Oxford University Captain. The Thomians won that match.
The best century at the Big Match -Royalist Jagath Fernando who made a glorious century before lunch. It could have been Duleep Mendis's, but Lassie was always fair and gave the opponents their due.
Lassie was cricket and cricket was Lassie. He unstintedly gave advice to any budding cricketer, whether he was a Thomian or otherwise. Like Michelangelo, who chiselled, cut and moulded the Boy David with a grotesque piece of marble, Lassie made cricketers of absolute base metal.
That's Lassie's genius.
May the red cherry and weeping willow be sentinels in his heavenly abode.