Shuttling to stardom

By Anushka WITHANAGE
 

Niluka Favourites Dress: Denim trouser and tee-shirt Food: Rice and curry Vocalist: C.T. Fernando Sportsman: Carlos Spencer

Shuttling to stardom has been Sri Lanka's No. 1 badminton player Niluka Karunaratne. He has won the most coveted local championship title - the men's singles title for eight consecutive years - record at that.

And he is the only Sri Lankan to have made an impact in the Commonwealth Games by reaching the quarter finals.

Being swift on the court and an astute reader of his opponent's strong points and weaknesses have been the strong points in 24-year old Niluka's career.

Following in his father Luhi's footsteps `like father like son' Niluka has of course gone the distance.

"My father was a former national player and is a former coach and that has helped a long way in reaching the standard I am today", says a smiling Niluka.

In fact, Niluka enjoys a huge advantage at national level being mite ahead of the others in the field. This, he confesses is due to `hard work put in by me which is the success story in staying at the top so long.'

To his credit is that Niluka, who incidentally had the honour of becoming the youngest national champion when he broke into the limelight winning the nationals at just the age of sweet sixteen, has ever since made his racquet rhyme sweetly. So much so that Niluka can boast of quite an impressive international record. He has in fact being runner-up four times, namely at the Walsh Men's Open singles final 2004, Australian Open Championships singles final 2006, 2007 Iran International Championship and 2008 Uganda International Championship.

In fact, going into Niluka's achievements abroad give quite an insight of the player he is. He has enjoyed success defeating several top ranked international players.

Some of these victories were over Indonesian No. 6 at the Asian Badminton championships 2003, Australian No. 1 (world ranking 38) at the Australian Open in 2004, New Zealand No. 1 (world ranking No. 58) at the same event, Malaysian No. 6 at Asian Championships 2005, Canadian No. 1 (world ranking No. 18) at Melbourne Commonwealth Games in 2006, Japanese No.8 at Bahrain International in 2006, Japanese No. 8 at Bahrain International 2007, Portugese No. 1 (world ranking 54) at Pakistan International 2007 and Spanish No. 1 (world ranking 44) at the Uganda International 2008.

He says that he is happy that he has come a long way since his early days as a junior.