By Scott McDonald

COLOMBO, March 20 (Reuters) -The Old Boy school network is alive and well in Sri Lanka and experiencing a feeding frenzy with the normal social and business rivalry between alumni of the two best-known schools knocked into overdrive by a cricket match.

Of course, a cricket contest between the country’s two bluest-blood schools — Royal College and S. Thomas’ College — is not just a match but "The Big Match", a game that stops parliament and splits the country’s elite.

The hype surrounding the Big Match — the latest which ended in a tame draw on March 10 — also further stamps the caste-like hold the schools have on Sri Lankan life, where one’s high school marks one for life no matter what a person does in the future.

"People from the two schools have dominated the politics and business in Sri Lanka for a long time," said Rohan Edirisinghe, a University of Colombo lecturer who was head prefect when he attended S.Thomas’.

Although he is now one of the country’s top constitutional experts, Edirisinghe is still often introduced as an Old Thomian when he speaks.

"That depends on the audience but it happens a lot," he said. "If it is a Royalist introducing me, the introduction is usually a joke that I went to the wrong school."

The match is played in a riveting atmosphere that could make a South American soccer game feel dull, with smoke bombs on the field, live bands and thousands of Old Boys drinking and dancing.

STAG NIGHTS

Students from the schools mill around the sidelines in their white uniforms, distinguishable only by the dullness of their ties — blue and black for S. Thomas’ and blue and gold for Royal.

The match also launches a round of pre-match stag nights where alumni from both schools gather to reminisce, brag and ogle Russian strippers hired especially for the occasion.

"Guaranteed, the top party of the year," said one Old Thomian.

The number of captains of industry and politicians in attendence at the match, including Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, also shows just how deep the schools’ roots are in Sri Lanka.

"There are very small numbers entering university so we identify with our schools," said Ajith Peiris, secretary of the Royal College Union, the school’s alumni association.

"This is like Oxford-Cambridge, but we don’t have universities at that level," he said.

Edirisinghe also said Sri Lanka’s weak university system tended to exaggerate the importance of the high schools.

"Before, many of these people didn’t go to university — they rose through the ranks, played rugby and cricket — and because of that they identified with their schools," he said. And it is hard to shake that school tag.

A newspaper profile of Wickremesinghe after he was elected in December started not with the news he had been prime minister before or had gone to law school, but with the fact he was a Royal Old Boy.

And it is unlikely anyone did not already know that in Colombo, where school ties constantly come up in conversations, giving the city a small-town feel where everyone knows everyone’s business.

"He was in the same batch as my brother" or "He was two years my junior" are familiar ways to describe someone.

Wickremesinghe also continues a record where all but four of the country’s male presidents and prime ministers since independence in 1948 have come from the two schools, and two of those "odd men out" took over because the incumbents were assassinated.

GOVERNMENT SCHOOL

S. Thomas’ was founded in 1851 and is a private school that still retains its Anglican Church links from the days when the island of Ceylon was a British colony, while Royal, which began in 1835, is a secular, government-run school.

To Royalists, that means they get top-dog bragging rights, although Thomians have been known to sniff that that can never be as Royal, after all, is a state-funded school.

The school-business bonds are just as strong, with some companies hiring predominantly from one of the schools, or in the case of one bank, ex-rugby players from S. Thomas’.

The life-long identification to one of the schools — which may prove the argument that the only thing more snobbish than a British public (private) school is a similar school in a former colony — even struck Michael Ondaatje, the award-winning writer who was born in Sri Lanka.

"As far as Sri Lankan families were concerned, if you were a well-known cricketer you could breeze into a career in business on the strength of your spin bowling or one famous innings at the Royal-Thomian match," Ondaatje wrote in his book "Anil’s Ghost".

Cricket prowess at one of the schools is also often mentioned on visa applications, said one Western diplomat.

The schools’ first official match was in 1880, and 123 years later without a miss or break for wars the "Big Match" dominates the sports year in cricket-mad Sri Lanka. Parliament was even forced into a recess one year recently so lawmakers could watch.

The series is either tied after all those years or S. Thomas’ leads, depending how the famous 1895 match is counted.

S. Thomas’, which has its campus on the southern edge of Colombo, says it won that year and leads the series with 33 wins to 32 with 58 matches drawn. For the downtown-based Royal, 1895 was a draw and the competition stands at 32 wins each.