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| Sunday, 9 June 2002 |
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Lankan tennis lags behind due to inadequate overseas exposure - Indian coach Amalnathan by LAL GUNESEKERA Talent-wise, there is plenty available in Sri Lanka. However, ambition is limited. Also, there is very little professionalism involved and if the players got the opportunity of playing in more tournaments overseas, they could have fared very much better than what they have achieved so far. These sentiments were expressed by Indian national, Arul Amalnathan, who has just completed one year of his two-year contract as Head Coach of the Sri Lanka Tennis Association (SLTA), mostly in charge of the junior program. Speaking to the Sunday Observer, Amalnathan said that he has been involved in coaching for the past 13 years, but Sri Lanka was his first overseas assignment. Starting as a Beginners Coach at the Triangular Tennis Trust in Chennai (Madras) for a period of five years, he came up with a lot of guidance, and was also attached to the Britannia-Amritraj Trust for one year. He was also at the TI Cycles Reyeppa Academy for two years and also at the Tamil Nadu TA too. Amalnathan was in charge of a special programme at the Tamilnadu TA for the top eight juniors (boys and girls between 14 and 18 years) of the State, before taking up his assignment in Sri Lanka. He said that the SLTA authorities headed by Suresh Subramaniam are now making every endeavour to send juniors out of the country more often, which will help these young players to improve further. He said, "I changed the patterns of the coaching programme at the SLTA a little bit, so it has a wider base. Things are slowly falling into place and looking much better now. Most of the players are not fully committed, although they train hard, and I got the support of all concerned. Amalnathan is in charge of the entire training programme at the SLTA and there are 14 coaches coming under his guidance. He instructs the coaches and follows up on their work, but deals directly with the 400 odd students of all age groups. He finally said that he is prepared to stay longer than two years in Sri Lanka, only if the SLTA decides to extend his contract and in another two to three years, he predicts a bright future for two of Sri Lanka's best juniors Franklyn Emmanual and N. S. Nishendran who have already shown great promise. |
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