Lankan Beach Volleyballers end up in fifth position

Bernard Perera in Lisbon, Portugal

The Sri Lankan Men's and women's Beach Volleyballers though they failed to win medals ended their tour on a grand note at the Lusofotonia Games in Lisbon , Portugal to finish fifth in the overall rankings.

Especially the men's team consisting Wasantha Ratnapala and Mahesh Perera performed well during their games against world's number one ranked Brazil. They in fact stretched Brazil and Portugal to the maximum while playing them in the quarter-finals and semi-finals giving a scare to both these teams.

Neanwhile the 'B' team of Dhammika Perera and Pubudu Ekanayake too played well in the preliminary round games but could not go up the ladder to reach the quarter-final. This was mainly due to the draw where they were placed in the same group along with the 'A' team of Sri Lanka. In the pre quarter-final they went down to their colleagues Wasantha and Mahesh to be knocked out of the quarters.

This draw can be considered as an error which the organizers have made and caused the Lankan 'B' team being knocked out from the tourney. The other problem the players both faced was the playing in late nights. The Lankan men's and women's players acclimatised well to conditions during the day time and performed well to beat their opponents. But playing in the night games they found things not in their favour as the winds that blew across the beaches of Santa Amaro increased the cold to high levels.

Especially the women spikers whose clothing were quite different to other games found it very difficult to cope with these conditions. The Lankan women once had to play their game late in the night at 10.55 p.m. ((3.0 a.m. SL time) during this game the women wore long sleeves tops and pants in place of Bikinis to evade the coldness to some extent. Here they failed to keep the tempo and succumbed to defeat at the hands of the strong Brazilians who were familiar with the conditions.

Coach of the Sri Lankan teams Prasanna Udaya Kumara was a happy man though his teams' failed to bring in medals. He said "the teams performances here was highly appreciable. The conditions on arrival were well suited for our teams but day-by-day it kept on changing. During the first two days the men and women did their part well to advance to the round two but disaster struck them with the climatic changes."

As this was the first occasion that these players played on European soil they could not get themselves used to these changing conditions in quick time. This was the main factor that contributed towards our defeats at the latter stages.