Sri Lankan paddlers for Commonwealth TT Tourney

By S M Jiffrey Abdeen - Kandy Sports Correspondent

Sri Lanka Men’s and Women’s Table Tennis team will participate in the Commonwealth Table Tennis Championship 2013 which will be held in New Delhi, India from May 5 to 10.

The men’s team will be led by Sri Lanka Air Force Paddler and many times national champion Rohan Sirisena and will include in the team the current national champion Nirmala Jayasinghe, schoolboy Udaya Ranasinghe, and Millinda Lakshitha from Air Force.

The women’s team will be led by the present women’s national champion Ishara Madurangi and will have in the ranks Nuwani Nawodya, Mahamaya schoolgirl Ridmi Karaganarachchi, Pawani Sirisena and Praveena Silva.

The team will be accompanied by national Table Tennis Coach Jagath Rajapakse and with Ms Thamara Hewage as delegate.

The skipper of the men’s team Rohan Sirisena is a product of Royal College and is an experienced paddler having led the national team on previous tours abroad. He has won the national championship title on many occasions and is ranked number one in Sri Lanka.

Nirmala Jayasinghe – a product of Vidyartha College and is currently employed at MAS Holdings and has won the Central Province championship titles and made a good impact at the last senior nationals by emerging champion. Fifteen year old Udaya Ranasinghe is one of the most promising stars in the national table tennis horizon. He is the current Junior National Champion and has carried away everything before at all under 15 and under 18 events in the tournaments with his excellent performances. Millinda Lakshitha of the Sri Lanka Air Force has been very consistent in his performances and he culminated it by winning the Men’s Open Singles title at the recently concluded Chrys Gunaratne Memorial All Island Table Tennis Championships.

Ishara Madurangi who will lead the Women’s National Team is a product of Sri Devananda College, Ambalangoda and is currently with the Sri Lanka Air Force. An enormously talented paddler and has been the Women’s Senior National Champion for the past seven years and has been winning almost every championship she has participated for the past seven years. She has also led the Sri Lanka Women’s team on tours abroad in the past.

Sixteen year old Nuwani Navodaya is from Dharmasoka College, Ambalangoda and is currently the Girls Junior National Champion which she won in 2012 which she won by defeating the top seed Erandi Waruswitharne. Since then she has been performing well in the local tournaments. Fourteen year old Ridmi Karadanarachchi of Mahamaya Girls College won the girls under 15 title at the last Junior Nationals but she is best remembered for her gutty performance at the finals of last year’s women’s senior nationals finals when she stunned by leading 3-0 against the national champion Ishara Madurangi before the latter scampered home by winning the last four sets and scoring a close 4-3 win in a pulsating match.

The other members of the women’s team Pawani Sirisena of Maliyadewa BMV and Praveena de Silva of Girls High School, Kandy have excelled in local tournaments to book a berth in the team. The Vice President of the TTASL Ms Sadisi Nirasha Peiris will accompany the team as an official.