He still holds the record for the first wicket with Ronnie Stephens in the Trinity St Anthony’s big match played in 1954. Whilst still a schoolboy from St Anthony’s he got selected to play for Ceylon against late Sir Leonard Hutton’s team at the Colombo Oval. He was a brave opening batsman who showed scant respect for any bowler including Ted Dexter, when he drove two scorching drives off the back foot through the covers, Dexter turned around and told him that he has never seen such glorious strokes before. That was the best compliment he ever got. He was batting with late C.I. Gunasekera and he noted that C.I. was reluctant to run for his strokes which were noted by late Ken Barrington. C.I. was plain jealous of the young brilliant opening bat from Kandy.
A.C.M.Lafir blazed a trail as an opening bat in Ceylon cricket, but he was dropped from the Ceylon team after that knock of 88 and was never recalled to play for Ceylon. He reminisced the fact that C.I. had a hand in that. I interviewed this charming ex-Ceylon cricketer at his Bambalapitiya flats.
Lafir stated that he never hesitated to take the bull by the horns when injustice was done to him in different walks of life. He pointed out that his cricket career was crudely cut short for several reasons such as CI’s jealousy, also late B.R. Heyn who blocked his path. They looked at him with a jaundiced eye probably because he was a Kandyan and he never bum sucked. A.C.M purely believed in his innate ability as a free scoring batsman armed with all the strokes in the book excelling in the square cut and the cover drive. He paid a great tribute late John Halangoda who showed him the rudiments of batsmanship at St Anthony’s Katugastota. Lafir admitted that he was a hard task master and even during festive seasons they had to attend practices.
After joining Esso as a sales executive, after school, Lafir did not have much time to play cricket due to lack of facilities in up country. Whenever he was called to Colombo for trial practices, he could not do justice to his talents because when his turn came to bat the pitches were very dicey, despite all those drawbacks he emerged as the no. 1 opening batsman in Ceylon until that innings of 88 he played under CI’s captaincy.
After the carpet was pulled under his feet when playing, he wanted to get in to coaching via the Board of Control for Cricket. However late Abu Fuard put a spoke into that stated Lafir. Fuard’s excuse was that his coaching certificates from Australia was not good enough and they selected only English qualified coaches which was pure bunkum remarked Lafir.
During A.C.M’s tenure playing for Ceylon he faced Typhoon Tyson who he said was lightning quick, the first few balls Tyson bowled at him he could not see but only he could hear the ball thudding into the wicket keeper’s gloves. However once he got his bearings he tackled him well. Brian Statham he stressed had pace plus brilliant seam movement both ways and was hard to tackle.Dave Allen the off spinner was a steady bowler.
Lafir stated that it was a quite a challenge to face the spin twins of India, namely Subhash Gupte and Ghulam Ahmed. Lafir reminisced that when Gupte bowled he put so many revs on the ball and it hissed like a cobra and the corresponding spin was prodigious, and he also smuggled a well concealed googly in the rush. Ghulam Ahmed the tall and elegant left armer used to plug one end up enabling Gupte to snare batsmen to his trap from the other end.
Amongst the local pacies in his time it was T.B. Kehelgamuwa and late Sonny Yatawara with his tremendous upper torso who could generate good pace at will noted. Lafir added that for piercing pace Kehel was hard to beat. Anura Polonowita was another left arm spinner who could bowl the chinaman as well.
Lafir was coaching at Nomads and he immediately spotted two youngsters who had talent and he nurtured them. They were none other than Roshan Mahanama and Asanka Gurusinha. Lafir had high praise for Mahadevan Sathasivam when he saw him, Satha had seen better days but if he wanted to play a cover drive he could do so even if the bowler bowled outside his leg stump. Lafir said Kumar Sangakkara was always vulnerable to slow left arm orthodox and right arm leggies and he used to get trapped in the leg trap most of the time.
When inquired to draw comparisons between Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli without any hesitation he said that Tendulkar was the better bat since he played against better bowlers, in that era. Not so long ago they had quality bowlers noted Lafir, he went on to state that due to a plethora of T20 cricket bowlers have lost their sting.
There were times when A.C.M. found jobs hard to get and as a result he joined the police force as a sub inspector where he reluctantly showed his footballing skills as a left winger.
Lafir advised youngsters who want to go far in cricket to apply themselves diligently and to make sacrifices. He advised talented young batsmen to carry a skipping rope wherever they go so that they could improve their fitness and footwork. He still walks for about one hour in the morning in spite of a niggling left knee.
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