He was a man of all seasons. Surendran Subramaniam was a man who could handle any challenge, stay calm in a crisis, and maintain morals against all odds around him.
I am trying to explain about a different man whom I knew and also knew the meaning of the word resilience, but at the same time had the time to scale Mount Olympus if the need of the hour was so.
Although formerly I knew him as a young tennis player at the SLTA (Sri Lanka Tennis Association), I really got to know the real Subramaniam as an official of the Tennis Association thinking of taking up the challenge of becoming the next President of the National Olympic Committee.
At that juncture, the man who was going to fit into the gigantic shoes of Hemasiri Fernando was a well-guarded secret, and one day, one of the NOC officials gave a number and requested me to call, and that call became the beginning of an honest friendship that lasted for more than a decade.
It was me as a newspaperman who broke the news that Suresh (Surendran) Subramaniam was going to take up the challenge against the team led by Rohan Fernando. In reality, Rohan, a serving stalwart in the NOC realms, was a heavyweight with backing, and Subramaniam was only man with a tennis background.
Yet at the initial meeting, one thing that Suresh told me struck my mind “He said I weighed the odds and was taking up that challenge, and I am sure that I would end up at right end of the scale”.
True, his predictions a few weeks (months) later Suresh was in the right side of the scale and there he was seeking to forge ahead with a new vision to the Sri Lankan Athletic Administration landscape, with new faces in the caliber of golfer M/s Niloo Jayathilaka and Asanga Seneviratne also wearing the NOC T-shirts for the first time.
For the first time, the women’s wing was formed under Niloo Jayatilleke. At the same time, the official NOC publication, the GoodSport Magazine, was launched under the supervision of the Present NOC President, Asanga Seneviratne. In short, it was a potpourri of new thinking. Also, there was a new media division deriving new ideas, and one significant move was the launch of the Crysbro Young Athlete discovery scheme, which eventually unearthed talent akin to female wrestler Nethmi Ahinsa Fernando, who brought home a rare Commonwealth medal and Tharushi Karunarathna, the Women’s 800m gold medalist in Hangzhou, China. Yet, the man at the helm, Subramaniam, while leading the spirited NOC team, never espoused the role of commander. For instance, on the third floor there was a cubicle set apart for him. But he always preferred to work along sitting on the visitor’s chair, a seat in the reception hall, or an empty seat in the media room. He was of the view that on the third floor he was cut off from the common sports people who needed answers to their questions, and the best place to be was among them. He never broke that tradition.
Along with the frills, there were embers of obduracy. A section of the old guard – at first glance, were hesitant, but gradually became a cacophony of leg-pulls which gradually became a series of counter moves alleging that the obdurate citadel was being threatened. Then it was all-out war.
Subramaniam never caved into pressure even when a majority were immovable. He side-stepped when it was needed, but always looked ahead at the greener pasture for the athlete in this island of splendor. He took each challenge on its own merit and fathomed every inch of the pathway to the solution, even if it took some time.
The end of the story is a Cinderella one with the NOC moving into the next phase of the administration, with the name of Subramaniam embedded in it. Yes, Suresh stood on one leg, fought for a cause which he could easily skip away from, but, knowing the man, it was not in his nature.
Meanwhile, one of Suresh’s closest confidantes and Senior Vice President Niloo Jayatilleke added: “It is with a heavy heart that I bid farewell to a man who gave so much of himself to Sri Lankan sport. Serving under his leadership for eight years, I saw firsthand the depth of his commitment — not as a title he carried, but as a calling he lived out daily.”
Suresh was, above all, a sports administrator in the truest sense. He understood that behind every athlete’s success, lies years of quiet institutional work, and he devoted himself to that work tirelessly, often at personal cost.
He believed, fiercely, in good governance. He pushed for transparency and accountability within the NOCSL at a time when it wasn’t always the easy path, and he held himself to the same standard he asked of others. He also advocated for gender equity focusing on women leadership and addressing struggles of female athletes.
But beyond the boardroom, what I will remember most is his resilience. He faced setbacks — political, institutional, and personal — with a quiet steadiness that never curdled into bitterness. He simply kept working.
“Sri Lankan sport is better for having had him. So am I, for having served alongside him.”
Gone too soon. Rest easy.
S.R. Pathiravithana