Royal College recorded a historic 62 run victory over Nalanda College to end a victory drought of over four decades in their traditional series as Banuka Rajapakse with a good double of 50 runs and a match bag of six wickets and Manesha Tantrigoda with an impressive five wicket haul for 12 runs excelled in their Inter-School match ended at Reid Avenue yesterday.

After being bowled out for 178 runs and 136 runs, Royal College did well to defend a low score as they restricted Nalanda to 97 runs in the second innings with leg-spinner Maneesha Tantrigoda ripping through their batting line up with a five wicket haul.

Royal’s victory over Nalanda came after a lapse of 40 years. The series started in 1932 has seen Royal win on 12 occasions against Nalanda’s eight victories. While Nalanda last recorded their victory in the year 2002, Royal last tasted victory under the captaincy of Ranjith Gunasekara in 1968.

Royal 178 all out in 50 overs (Kithruwan Vithanage 83, Haroon Mawjood 31, Sahan Hettiarachchi 17; Adeesha Nanayakkara 3/45, Dinuk Jayasinghe 4/30) and 136 all out in 46.2 overs (Kusal Janith 33, Chalaka Bogoda 18, Banuka Rajapakse 50; Adeesha Nanayakkara 3/32, Nipun Karunanayake 4/31, Dinuk Jayainghe 2/46)

Nalanda 73 for 4 overnight 155 all out in 47.1 overs (Chetan de Silva 45, Dinuk Jayasinghe 33; Banuka Rajapakse 4/31) and 97 all out in 46 overs (Prashan Wickramasinghe 45; Banuka Rajapakse 2/22, Haroon Mawjood 3/26, Maneesha Tantrigoda 5/12)