Nuwani wins Fair Play Trophy

S M Jiffrey Abdeen Kandy Sports Correspondent

Seventeen year old Nuwani Navodhya won the “Fair Play Trophy” at the 19th Commonwealth Table Tennis Championship 2013 concluded in New Delhi, India over the weekend.

This was disclosed by the Vice President of the Sri Lanka Table Tennis Association Nirasha Peiris who is now in India with the Sri Lanka table tennis team.

She said that the Sri Lanka women’s team did extremely well to finish eighth in the table which is indeed very good considering the opposition they had to face.

The team was led by national women’s champion Ishara Madurangi of the Sri Lanka Air Force and a product of Sri Devananda Vidyalaya, Ambalangoda. The rest of the team were made of school girls which included Nuwani Navodhya (Dharmasoka College), Pavani Sirisena (Maliyadeva Balika Vidyalaya), Praveena Silva (Girls High School, Kandy) and Ridmi Karadanarachchi (Mahamaya Girls College, Kandy) who at 14 years was the ‘baby of the team’.

Since most of the players are still in their teens and still attending school, the team has a bright future if they continue playing in this manner and they should with the passage of time especially table tennis is not a contact game.

Nuwani Navodhya is the current Junior National Champion and has done extremely in the local tournaments.

Two other top paddlers like Erandi Waruswitharne and Umaya Tharaki both could not make this trip to the Commonwealth championship due to personal reasons.

The national table tennis coach Jagath Rajapakse has done a good job in moulding the paddlers into a fighting cutfit, though most of them were very young and could go a long way.

The Sri Lanka mens table tennis team which participated in this championship was led by Rohan Sirisena of Sri Lanka Air Force did well to finish 12th in the team championship.

The other members of the team were current national champion Nirmala Jayasinghe (MAS Intimates), Udaya Ranasinghe (Vidyartha College) and Milinda Lakshitha (Sri Lanka Air Force).