239th Meeting: The big match meeting

Posted On March 26, 2015

By Shehan Thilina Jayasinghe

“When Gavel meets the great tradition of Big Match” people “hit all the boundaries with their words”! The annual Big Match Meeting, a colourful evening with a long history unfolded at the 239^th meeting of the Gavel Club on 26^th March 2015 at the PG Seminar Room in ENTC Department.

The meeting was expected to be very fun and exciting and that’s exactly what it turned out to be. Most of the attendees were dressed in their respective school colours for the special day. As usual the President brought the meeting to order and began the proceedings by welcoming the attendees, and handed over the control to Shehan Thilina Jayasinghe, the toastmaster. He welcomed all the members again to the special meeting. Then he briefly introduced the Big Match tradition and requested all the speakers to stay within the spirit of Gavel when the Big Match spirit takes over!

The round robin session was “The craziest thing you’ve done at school”, where each member came up with amusing mischief they’d accomplished at school, and not got caught. Everybody enjoyed the chance to remember their adventurous school times and sharing them.

Then the round robin session started with some radically worded topics from Shehan Avindra, the Table Topics Master. Kasun began the topics session by vividly describing about the battle of the two cities, his school’s big match. He went on to say that it always ended in an exchange of blows which resulted in its eventual cancellation and warned others not to go down that path. Chamanthi stirred the assembly when she took the stage and proclaimed that Big Matches are a time for boys to let out frustration, the meeting was in for a confrontation!

“The Big Matches are worth being obsessed about”, Piyumi defended Big Matches in her turn and expressed her desire to enjoy the adventures and brotherhood of the exciting tradition. Ushani interpreted the topic differently to show the dedication and struggle of her mother in taking care of her children. The audience were swayed by the emotion of the “best big match” that she had seen. Taking on another side effect of the Big Match tradition Vibhanu tackled the ugly creature of media. He showed the biased reporting of news that did not reflect on the significance of the news to a citizen, and how small incidents were pushed all day to create a hype.

Malith expressed how he enjoyed big matches; meeting school friends, singing, dancing and cheering. He further told that there are many ways a boy can tackle frustration, which seemed to be an obvious rebuttal to Chamanthi. Next Chamara explored the roots of Big Matches when he explained how his school held the first big match. He expressed concern over how it was getting difficult to uphold traditions as others schools were doing it wrong “in his opinion”. This obviously didn’t go well with the audience. Then Samitha compensated for the lack of her experience at a big match by portraying vividly how her brother prepared for big match so much ahead of time in excitement. When you don’t have a cricket big match, you can have a Football big match, Merl took the opportunity to describe the dedication of his school team even in defeat in football matches, and how it inspired him in his sporting achievements.

As the table topic session came to conclusion the timer’s and ah counter’s reports were given and a set of valuable evaluations were delivered by the evaluators stressing on how to improve further. Before handing down the control, the Toastmaster stressed on the fact that Big Match is a tradition everybody owns.

The reports by Grammarian and general evaluator were presented as the president appreciated the enthusiasm and spirit of the attendees. The president formally concluded the meeting, but the night was still young as he suggested a gavel game, rekindling a forgotten tradition. Heads began to roll when three question were answered secretly by members and the answers were used to find the writer by guessing, and funny insights to people were given by their answers. And thus ended an exciting session where all confrontations of big match stayed true to the Gavel Spirit. So shall it be the next year!

The role players for the day

Toastmaster – Shehan Thilina Jayasinghe