Thursday 11th March, 2010 15

Sri Lanka beat hosts India inthe title clash of the WFL T20Afro Asia Cup winning by threewickets with three balls to spareat the Lal Bahadur Stadium,Hyderabad.

The hosts won the toss anddecided to bat first. India made aslow start, courtesy some tidybowling by the Lankans. At thehalf-way mark, the hosts wereplaced at 43 for 1, before theacceleration began. KunalDubey scored a patient 35 off 45balls in a knock that containedtwo fours and a six. However, itwas the 81- run third wicketstand between Ilyas Jubedi (49)and Apurva Sharma (48 n.o.)that took the Indian total to 159for 3 in the stipulated 20 overs.

Apurva’s knock had a soli-tary boundary and two hits sail-ing over the ropes while Ilyaswas more aggressive of the duo,taking the aerial route to hit fivetowering sixes and two bound-aries in his breezy stay at thewicket.

Chasing, 160 for a win, theSri Lankans commenced on apositive note with the openersadding 48 in quick time. S.Kashawa top scored with 38 thatcame off 33 deliveries. Hisknock was studded with sixfours and one six.

Kashawa was well supported

by D. Jayasundara who chippedin with 34 off 27 that containedfour hits to the fence and one six.The other main contributor forthe Lankans was C. Mapatunawho took 24 off 21 balls.

Amidst the carnage causedby the Lankan batsmen, theIndians did boost hopes of anunlikely win by reducing theiropponents to 150 for 7 but R.Gamage (12 n.o.) held his nerveto clinch the contest with threeballs to spare.

For the Indians, Syed Anwarwas the pick of the lot, baggingfour wickets while conceding 22runs. Others to shine with theball were Shivam Mishra (1/24)and Parveet Kumar (1/30).

Kashawa was adjudged theMan-of-the-match while Y.A.Imran and Md Jasimuddin (bothfrom Bangladesh) bagged thebest bowler and best batsman ofthe tournament respectively.

For scoring 185 runs, scalp-ing seven wickets and takingseven catches in the tourna-ment, D. Jayasundara wasnamed the Man- of-the-series.

Brief Scores:India 159/3 in 20 overs (Ilyas

Jubedi 49, Apurva Sharma n.o.48, Kunal Dubey 35) lost to SriLanka 160 for 7 in 19.3 overs (S.Kashawa 38, D. Jayasundara 34,C. Mapatuna 24, Syed Anwar4/22).

The victorious Sri Lankan team

Unbeaten, Abans Group and oncebeaten, Linea Aqua had easy passageto the Final of the David Pieris MotorCo-Ltd., sponsored, “Bajaj” challengetrophy. MCA Division ‘E’ 40-oversLeague tournament, winning theirSemi-Final matches played last week-end

In the top half Semi-finals , two finehalf centuries by Vinod Kumar (81 notout in 84 balls with ten fours and twosixes ) and Ruvin Peiris ( 71 runs in 54balls inclusive of 12 fours) and a mes-merizing 03 overs bowled by NalakaGunawardena, which yielded 04 wick-ets for just 03 runs, propelled AbansGroups to a crushing 138 run win overAkbar Brothers.

In the bottom half semi-final, theLinea Aqua’s pace-spin combination ofK. Samantha and S. Rangajeewa, M.Pradeep and R. Kamil ran through theMercantile Investments batting line-up like to win by 80 runs.

The finalists Abans Group andLinea Aqua played in the same groupin the league stage and their leaguematch on the 29th January at ThurstanCollege grounds went in favour ofAbans group by 43 runs.

In the super league stage, AbansGroup beat HSBC ‘C’ by 120 runs andMercantile Investments by 93 runs,while Linea Aqua scored wins againstAkbar Bros by 114 runs and DialogTelekom ‘A’ by 56 runs.

Brief Scores:Abans Group beat Akbar Bros. by

138 runs.Abans Group (won the toss) 263

for 7 in 40 overs (Vinod Kumar 81 notout, Ruwin Peiris 71, Amal Peiris 32,R. Wijenayake 25, K. Prasanga 2/45,B. Perera (2/40)

Akbar Bros 125 in 31 overs (K.Dasanayake 35, K. Urendren 36, B.Perera 20, Nalaka Gunawardena 4/3,Sridhar 2/9, R. Wijenayake 2/25.

Linea Aqua beat Merc. Investmentsby 80 runs

Linea Aqua: (won the toss) 177 in37.3 overs (K. Samantha 30, D.Ariasinghe 36, A. Aluthge 35, N.Gunaratne 21, D. Marlon 2/25,

D. Seneviratne 3/30, G.Wimalaratne 2/45, P. Seneviratne2/14)

Merc Investments: 97 in 28 overs(C de Seram 25, K. Samantha 2/15, S.Rangajeewa 2/20, M. Pradeep 2/20, R.Kamil 2/5).

Abans and Linea Aqua qualifyfor Mercantile ‘E’ Division final SL win WFL T20 Afro-Asia Cup

This year’s inter-house sports meet ofAnanda College, Colombo, will be held tomorrow(Friday) starting at 1 p.m. at the college grounds.

The Chief Guest of the meet this year will bethe Amateur Athletic Association of SL VicePresident and the SL Red Cross’ Deputy Dir.General, Col. Sugath Madugalle.

Ananda sports meettomorrow

The Annual Sports Meet of Visakha NurserySchool, 135, Vajira Road, Colombo will be heldon Friday, the 19th of March, 2010 at the SchoolGrounds.

The Chief Guest on this occasion will beMiss. Mineka Karunarathne, SAF Games doublegold medallist.

The school has around 200 kids participatingthis time and the Sports Meet is being organizedby the Principal and Staff of Visakha NurserySchool.

Visakha NurserySchool Sports Meet

Visakha’s Udara clinches Age Group Swimming Championship for 11th time

Udara Cumaratunga receives her award from Chief Guest Asangi Wijesundere

Udara Cumaratunga ofJayathilake House was hailed asthe Under 19 age group Championat the Visakha Vidyalaya Inter-House Swimming Meet 2010 heldrecently.

She has been the champion ofher age group since 2000. Sheemerged Open Champion in 2006,2007, 2008 and Joint Champion in2009 with Nadeera Jayasekera.

Udara has brought honour tothe school by winning the BestSwimmers Award at the Sri LankaSchools Swimming and DivingChampionships and at the NationalSports Festival in 2009.

Udara represented Sri Lanka, atthe Chennai 2006, South AsiaSwimming and Water PoloChampionships 2007, the 6th AASFAsian Age Group Championships2009 and the South Asian Games2010 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

“Popularity andmoney havedistanced him

from us. He called us‘ayya’ (elder brother)those days. Now when hesees us, he’d just say,‘Machang, gihilla ennan’(I’ll see you). Now theb****** is head-swollen”.

That was a referencemade by a co journalist to aprominent member of thenational cricket team. Yes,cricket in Sri Lanka involvesa lot of money and a conse-quential ‘pop’ factor. It isimmensely popular at allsocial levels. Cricket is theking of sport here. Others areall its subordinates. Of them,tennis, one last Bastian of thereally colonial sport in SriLanka, is only a very trivialsubordinate.

Cricket to the foreThe fact that tennis too had

been on par with cricket at thedawn of the last century is aworthless argument now. That thefamous C. H. and C. I.Gunasekeras played for Ceylon notonly in cricket but also in tennis,that both Ceylon and India --orMadras (later Tamil Nadu)-- wereinvolved in a long-running tradi-tional cricketing dual for thefamous M. J. Gopalan Trophy butalso in tennis, mostly in the DavisCup where legendary Indians likeRamanathan Krishnan, Anand andVijay Amritraj, Shiv-Prakash Misra,Sashi Menon, Premjit Lall andJaidip Mukerjea played against the topCeylonese players then; these eventsmade the vivid memory of the mainlyColombo-based sports enthusiasts ofthe 1950s, ’60s and the ’70s. Cricket andtennis had no big difference in theirhistories.

Until cricket underwent its recenttransformation, both tennis and itwere basically ‘colonial’ and wererestricted more or less to the elite.Names of top national level men’s ten-nis players, ‘Koo’ de Saram, RupertFerdinands, Bernard Pinto, D. D. N.Selvadurai, P. Senaka Kumara,Lasantha Fernando, Arjun Fernandoand Frank Sebaratnam, etc. were oftentalked about in the same breath alongwith names of F. C. de Saram, BenNavaratne, Sargo Jayawickrema,Mahadevan Sathasivam, T. B.Kehelgamuwa, Michael Tissera and

Anura Tennekoon, the famous All-Ceylon cricketers then, in the poshupper class discourse.

Enter GodamannaBut, now the times have changed.

There is hardly anyone who knowswho plays tennis for Sri Lanka thesedays. Only the limited tennis fraternityis keen to know that. It has come downto a virtual private show of GreenPath, Colombo 7, where one finds thenational association of tennis. It does-n’t have at least 25 active clubs roundthe island now. In this dishearteningcontext enters the Godamanna factor!

A four-year-old son of ThilakGodamanna, prominent businessmanand the producer of the criticallyacclaimed Vijaya – Malini film hit,‘Bambaru Ewith’, directed by the emi-nent Dharmasena Pathiraja in the late1970s, began playing tennis under thetutelage of a leading Colombo-based

coach, Sylvester Francis. A lankyRoyal College student was just 16 whenhe first played for Sri Lanka in a DavisCup, in Dhaka in 2002.

Then, since 2005, this wiry left han-der, with a some what outdated single-handed style back-hand stroke, hasbeen able to emerge as the leading con-tender in the island’s tennis. He hasbeen able to carry single-handedly thecountry’s hopes when they’re out ofSri Lanka. You miss ‘Godda’, you missthe match, the tie and everything. Thathas been the norm for six long yearsnow.

In 2006, he went pro –a brave andhighly expensive move that not a sin-gle other tennis player in this countrythought of making since ArjunFernando (who had been ranked 293 inthe world over 30 years ago)— andwent to Bangkok to train fulltimeunder Dominik Utzinger. Harshana

achieved a career high 811 in Oct., 2008,before leaving the men’s professionaltour circuit (the ATP) disgruntled.

OvershadowedBut Godamanna, after retiring from

the tour, continued with his training,playing in local tourneys expecting toleave for the US for his higher studies.Harshana was, though, never to miss aDavis Cup as he reckoned it a true‘national duty’ of any tennis player. Heplayed for Sri Lanka this year too,when she met New Zealand in Colombofor the first time in the history, afterhelping the country qualify for theDavis Cup Zonal Group 2 last year inSyria, following a decade-long stagna-tion in the lowest Group 3 and 4.

Last Sun. (March 7) at the SLTA inColombo, he met the Kiwi No.1 DanielKing-Turner, who was probably thehighest ranked to play in Sri Lanka inthe recent history, in a key singles

match of this year’s Davis Cup tie.King-Turner was 227 in the grand listwhich that amazing Swiss RogerFederer leads.

Unruffled by any idea of one’sranks and records, Godamanna wenton the rampage in one of the best, ifnot the best, displays of tennis seenfrom a Sri Lankan in this generation.After losing the first two sets 4-6 and 4-6, ‘Godda’ levelled the match, winningthe next two by 7-5, 7-6 (7-4) in franticfive-hour long mid-day battle forsupremacy until the Kiwi pro suc-cumbed due to leg cramps before vom-iting, unable to cope with extreme tem-perature and humidity.

The match was then forfeited toGodda in the fifth set, which he wasleading 3-0, to the utmost jubilation ofthe sparse Sunday crowd. Never in the

recent history ofthis country, ten-nis has seen suchan overwhelmingupset. But sadly, atruly definingmoment of a sportin the island hadbeen overshad-owed by a mereinter-provincialevent in the mediasports coverage,both that nightand the day after.The provincialevent was, nowonder, a cricket-ing one.

What sad mes-sage does this

whole scenario give us? We are com-pelled to see what we don’t want to see.The highlights we watch are not really‘highlights’. Some golden opportunitiesare missed. Sports like tennis would’vemade use of them in a more usefulmanner.

Cricket broke its colonial shacklesthrough time, through ideologicalbreakdown, and the effort of somebrave men, and now it has entered adifferent era in its evolution here. Withsome rare prospects like Godamanna,tennis too could achieve such break-throughs. Tennis too ought to heraldKumar Sangakkaras. It is not to makefuture tennis ‘stars’ richer and dis-tanced from their old friends, likesome top cricketers, but to make thegame more accessible, more diversifiedin participation and to one day makeour national team full of ‘Goddas’.

Unruffled by any idea of one’s ranks and records, HarshanaGodamanna, on right, went on the rampage in one of thebest, if not the best, displays of tennis seen from a SriLankan in this generation. Still the feat was overshadowedby inter-provincial cricket in the following day media. Here,‘Godda’ with the Sri Lanka cricket captain KumarSangakkara. (Pic by Nishan S. Priyantha/Files)