Sri Lanka and Davis Cup
An overview of the Davis Cup competition at present, will provide the purpose of our involvement in Tennis.
India and Japan are two countries that have been successful in consistently maintaining their Asian supremacy in Tennis for over 50 years. Their record in Davis Cup is very impressive. In recent time, Far Eastern nations are showing an upbeat trend. The scales available today to measure a nation's Tennis are the number of players in WTA and Fed Cup performances for Women, and ATP and the Davis Cup for Men. The International Tennis Federation ( ITF) holds the event rights for the Davis Cup and, of recent, they have started to maintain a worldwide Ranking of nations for it.
Impressive Kazakhstan
In Davis Cup, Kazakhstan is Ranked 13 and, as the best Asian country, plays in the elite World Group as one of the best 16 nations in the world. They have been very impressive, considering it to be a recently formed country. With 5 players in the top 700 of the world Rankings in Singles and 2 players in the first 300 of Doubles, they beat Switzerland convincingly. This goes to show that depth of players matters more than any other factor, to win team events. Davis Cup success of nations can be directly related to the number of players a nation has in the world Ranking of players.
Kazakhstan’s best player, Mikhail Kukushin is 75 in the ATP Ranking. Their No.2 Popko, although Ranked 257, has risen to the occasion very well many times. They beat Switzerland this year and are due to play Croatia in the quarterfinals in early April. When Sri Lanka played Kazakhstan, when they were in Group II, in Almaty, their entire team was in the army. Only the army could indulge in sports at that time in Kazakhstan. Now it has changed. Kukushin is a professional Tennis player. The army plays a big role in promoting sports in Kazakhstan.
Japan is the other country in the world Group. This is entirely due to the presence of Kei Nishikori. However, this year, with him injured, they were easily beaten by Italy.
Group I & Asian Ranking
Currently, India, Pakistan, China and Uzbekistan are in Group I semifinals. Of them, India has the best record reaching the challenge round in the '60s. Sri Lanka never reached Group I in the past. Our best has been semifinals of Group II. In this position, we lost once to Hong Kong and Pakistan.
Good Ranking in Davis Cup is what most Asian Countries try to achieve now. In the Rankings, the best Asian nation is Kazakhstan at 13, Japan is 17 and India 21. Pakistan, Korea and Thailand are in the top 50 of the Davis Cup Ranking. Altogether there are 6 Asian countries in the top 50 of the Ranking. There are 12 Asian countries in the 2nd 50 of the Ranking. Sri Lanka is currently 74 in the world in Davis Cup Ranking.
Team building criteria
Countries in the 2nd half of the Ranking do not have players in the top 250 of the world. While training of age group juniors will give some ability to play local Tennis, this is not enough to be in the world Ranking. To be an Open- Tennis player, at practice, one must play regular Sets. Good ATP players stack up to 16 to 20 Sets a week, to train the body, skills and tactics as a combined single entity. They are the ones in the top 250 of the world Ranking.
One of the reasons our Wheelchair Tennis is doing so well is because they are all from the Army, and play Sets every weekday morning for long hours. This is something that has slipped out of our regular Tennis scene. For the good players, Tennis courts are not available, and the worst is, there are no good players to play with.
Team building path
Many countries like ours, pick up players living in developed countries and hope for the best. Our present standard of Tennis is good only to be closer to 100 in Davis Cup Ranking. This way we are not using Davis Cup to enhance local Tennis.
All top Davis Cup countries have a strong adult player base in competition and recreational base. Requirement for this is the availability of courts islandwide.
Right now, we have many government institutions islandwide, but none of it has sport wing for adults. It is only for age group development which, actually, must come under the Education Department, and not under any other. This way, school Tennis courts can be maintained and Tennis, as a sport, can be introduced at school level. Taiwan has been using this system very successfully from the 1990s. Today Taiwan has Grand-Slam players.
Stopping the slide
Sri Lanka at independence and for four decades after that, was in the top 5 of Asia. The present trend of Tennis management started in the '70s. Ever since then, positions and status of office and money has been put way above in priority. This has to change.