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| Sunday, 30 January 2005 |
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Oshada Wijemanne determined to play among the boys in French Open One of Sri Lanka's top juniors - 17-year-old Oshada Wijemanne is now 189th in the junior world rankings of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) after three impressive performances in Singapore and Bangladesh over the past month. He was earlier ranked 465. He reached the semi-finals of the singles at the Singapore Junior International ITF Championship, whilst been the runner-up in both singles and doubles at two ITF Junior International tournaments in Dhaka and Rai Shan. In Singapore, Wijemanne, shocked Jeshua Crowe of Australia, who only a few days earlier had won the ITF Perth Junior Championships. In the quarter-finals which lasted nearly four hours, Wijemanne beat the Australian 4-6, 7-6, 6-3, but the effects of this long battle had its effect on his semi-final meeting with Indonesia's Agoon Bagoos (fifth seed) who won 3-6, 7-5, 6-3. Wijemanne was eliminated from the quarter-finals of the singles in Dhaka, but made amends in the doubles with India's Prakash Gupta. They won the quarter-final and semi-final matches, but lost 6-3, 3-6, 2-6 to a Bangladeshi pair. Then in Rai Shan, (Dhaka) Wijemanne, was in top form beating opponents from India, South Korea and Chinese Taipei to storm into the semi-finals of the singles, where he met stiff resistance from Gupta (fifth seed and ranked 178th), but won 6-2, 3-6, 6-0. However in the final, Wijemanne met the top seed Cheng En-Hang from Chinese Taipei who proved too much for the Lankan who lost 2-6, 5-7. Wijemanne says that he is determined to stay among the top 200 which entitles him to take a shot at competing in the main draw of the boys singles at the French Open in May. He plans to play in four more ITF Junior Tournaments before the French Open and improve on his world ranking. He was schedule to leave for the USA on a tennis scholarship in December last year (2004), but the President of the Sri Lanka Tennis Association (SLTA) Suresh Subramanium managed to get Wijemanne to change his mind because he felt that Wijemanne should go to the USA with a higher ITF ranking. The SLTA are backing Wijemanne's campaign by financing all his overseas competitions this year (2005), and hopes that he will succeed and make tennis his career. Wijemanne's next tournament is the Sri Lanka ITF Junior International from February 12 to 20 at the SSC courts, before he competes in the ITF Juniors of Mauritius, Malta and Italy in March-April before the French Open in May. (L.G.) |
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