Avindra, Piyumi and Nethmi clinch junior tennis titles

Angu Rajendran

There was high action at the SLTA yesterday as the Junior National Tennis Championships reached the final stages.

Top seed Piyumi Wickramasinghe beat Umeshi Ranasweera and Nethmi Waduge beat Hasindi Lokuge to win the under 10 and under 12 girls’ junior national tennis championships, in one-sided finals.

Ten year old Avindra Perera of St. Thomas College played for almost two and a half hours against Nuwantha Dissanayake to finally win the under 10 boys championships 9-7.

Avindra says’ he was confident of winning because of his very good first serve and his surplus energy to go on and on playing long after his opponent is tired even though his mother is too nervous to watch him play’. ‘His consistency always helps him win’ said his young friends who had come to watch.

Yesterday indeed had many interesting semi final matches, so much so that the under 18 girls semi-final between Roshenka Fernando vs Shankari Thayakaran after being played for about three hours where they have one set each will be continued today due to bad light last evening. The other semi-final was won by Amritha Muthiah.

The under 12 boys finals will be between CIS student Joshua Jayaratne and Anthony de Silva. Fourteen year old Royalist Sharmal Dissanayake who made it to the semi finals of the under 18 age group where he lost to Vimuktha de Alwis will play against Danushka Abeywardene in the under 14 final which he is confident of winning.

Under 14 girls finals will be played between Thisuri Molligoda and Thilini Atapattu.

The under 16 girls finals will be between dynamo Shankari Thayakaran and Nilushi Fernando. The boys finals will be played between Shaveen Chinthaka and Vimuktha de Alwis.

And the real cracker of a final will be the coveted junior National Title for under 18 boys between Amresh Jayawickrama and Vimuktha de Alwis which is scheduled for 9 a.m today at the SLTA courts.