JNR: Davis Cup Trials:

Vimuktha De Alwis underlines his class

Richard Dwight

The fourteen year old, Vimuktha De Alwis, made a very commendable impact on the Junior (Under 16) Davis Cup trials, held from 18 to 20 February at the SLTA courts.

His performance was most convincing, in that he easily registered victories against Ashan de Silva 6/1, 6/0, Akila de Silva 6/0, 6/1, Thurana Eswarage 6/1, 6/2 and Chinthaka Shaveen 6/1, 6/1. Evidence of his prowess, that led one to believe, that he was the best Under 16 player in Sri Lanka.

Vimuktha by so doing, made the right kind of impression to be selected along with Thurana Eswarage and Ashan de Silva to participate in the Junior Davis Cup (Under 16) tournament that takes place from March 3 to 9 in Myanmar.

The Sri Lankan team consisting of the 3 Players having a play 2 singles and one doubles - will have to initially play in the pre-qualifying round and so do well in order to play in the main Davis Cup competition.

It must be mentioned that, Vimuktha De Alwis, though schooling at British International School in Jakarta, has been coming to compete in the Sri Lanka Junior Nationals.

He won the Junior National under 12 in 2006, the runner up in the Junior National under 14 in 2008 and won the Junior National under 14 in 2008.

In May last year he won the Asian Championship under 14 defeating a top ranked Malaysian player, Mohamed Deedat. Apparently Vimuktha does appear to have been the only Sri Lankan to have won a singles event of this category in the Asian Tennis Federation Championship.

That’s not all for in January 2009, he won an Indonesian open under 18 singles event which is good going for a 14 year old, considering that Indonesian tennis standards are comparatively high.

He began developing a fondness for tennis at the age of 6, when he won a under 8 club event in Malawi, Africa and at 8 years of age, won the Moors Sports Club under 10 singles event.

Tennis apart Vimuktha is also a fine athlete having distinguished himself as a long distance runner to hold the South East Asian International schools 800 and 1500 metre record.

He has also started running the men’s open 5 KM event in Indonesia and won in November 2008 in a time of 18.03 Mts. He whilst having an interest in athletics, his passion however is to further a career in tennis.