Sri Lanka's junior tennis players fail to impress

By Lal Gunesekera

TENNIS: Sri Lanka's junior players failed badly to make an impression at both the Junior Davis Cup (qualifying) in Thailand as well as the Junior Federation Cup (pre qualifying) in Bangladesh.

Sri Lanka were 14th out of 16 countries at the Junior Davis Cup (qualifying) in Thailand and were represented by Indika Wettashinghe. Gayanga Wijesuriya and Eshan Jayamanne with Ganendran Subramaniam as non-playing captain cum coach.

Then came the Junior Federation Cup (pre qualifying) in Bangladesh where Sri Lanka represented by Jithmi Jayawickreme, Amritha Muttiah and Nilupul Gunasekera were 16th out of 16 teams after coming second in the pre qualifying tournament. The result was the same at the World Junior Championship in New Delhi, India once again finishing 16th out of 16 countries in both the boy's and girl's events.

The boys were represented by Stephan Martin, Sharmal Dissanayake and Nevinda Niraj, while the girls who played for Sri Lanka were Sherene Wijesinghe, Ajini Gunawardene and Nadin Jayaratne with Cristopher Barathiraj Pillai and Mahesha Seneviratne as non-playing captain cum coach of the boys and girls teams respectively.

At the ITF Asian Under-14 Championship in Pakistan, the young girls fared much better than the boys with Sherene Wijesinghe coming fourth, Ajini Gunawardene eighth and Yasodara Karunaratne sixth, while among the boys, Stephan Martin was 11th, Mohamed Shakir 12th and Nevinda Niraj 19th. Christopher Barathiraj Pillai was again the non-playing captain cum coach.