Sri Lankan girls bounce high in tennis
Sri Lanka joined the top ten countries in the Asia-Oceania region at the recently concluded Junior Federation Cup tennis competition in Malaysia on April 16-22 coming ahead of more fancied India and New Zealand.
The Sri Lankan team consisted of Anjalika Kurera (Ave Maria Convent, Negombo), Savini Jayasuriya (Bishops College), Oneli Perera (St. Bridget’s Convent) and Senuri Alexander (Visakha Vidyalaya). Tharaka Fernando was non-playing captain.
The Sri Lankan lasses lost to Japan, Indonesia and Uzbekistan but won against Malaysia, Singapore and Mongolia to earn the 10th position. This is a singular achievement for Sri Lanka. They also booked a place for Sri Lanka at the qualifying round of next year’s Federation Cup tournament.
In the pre-qualifying competition held in Colombo in March this year, the same team with Thangarajah Dineshkanthan as non-playing captain won all their matches defeating Maldives, Singapore and Lebanon and topped nine countries to obtain first place.
Sri Lanka’s star player Anjalika Kurera is coached by Sylvester Francis and Niranjan Casie Chetty. Savini Jayasuriya, Oneli Perera and Senuri Alexander are members of the Sri Lanka Tennis Association’s High Performance Squad coached by Eric Pietersz from the Netherlands.
The Junior Federation Cup competition is the premier international junior girls’ event for those in the Under 16 age group and is conducted by the International Tennis Federation.