Senura Silva leads Sri Lankan Table Tennis team to Oman

The team poses with the picture before their departure. From Left Lithum Karunasena (Royal) Senura Silva (Capt) (Ananda) Dewmeth Weerasena (Lyceum Nugegoda) Senul Rathnayake (Dharmaraja) Vajira Wickramasinghe, (Manager and Coach) Hasitha Samaraweera – (Coach) Janith Batugedara (Royal) Thisum Gamage (Ananda), Vinuka Gunawardane (Royal) Matheesha Wickramanayake Dharmaraja.   

Sri Lanka’s number one ranked player Senura Silva of Ananda College will lead the eight member team, representing Table Tennis Association of Sri Lanka (TTASL) at the World Table Tennis Youth Championship which is now in progress in Oman. The four day event will conclude on October13.

Senura the 15 year old promising paddler recently performed well at the 25th Asian TT championship in Doha Qatar. He was able to beat high ranked players at the Asian event and finally Sri Lanka team finished in 18th place.

The elder son of former National champions Deepika Rodrigo and Indika Prasad is the youngest men’s team member at the Asian Championship gained good experience at the event. Senura also the youngest Sri Lankan player who took part in the last South Asian Games having more International experience and after returning home on October 7 from Qatar left for the Oman tour.

Meanwhile Dewmeth Weerasena of Lyceum International School Nugegoda who recently joined the Junior Table Tennis pool got a chance to join the team on this Oman tour Dewmeth’s achievements include achieving the first rank in the Under-12 age group and the fourth rank in the Under-15 age group in 2020. This year, Dewmeth also claimed the second rank in the Under-15 age group and currently holds the 47th rank in the ITTF Table Tennis Under-13 Boys Singles category.

Dewmeth has participated in international tournaments, such as the South Asian Regional ITTF Hope and Cadet Week and Challenge Program 2019 (13-18 December 2019) in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he secured the third spot.

Dewmeth has also participated in the Regional Hopes Week (South Asia) 2019 (22-27 January 2019), held in Haryana, India and the ITTF World Junior Circuit Premium Oman Junior and Cadet 2019 in Muscat, Oman (24-28 October 2019).

Additionally, Dewmeth was a participant in the Asia Hopes Week 2019 (6-13 May 2019) and the SET Thailand Junior and Cadet Open 2019 (15-19 May 2019), which were programmes held in Bangkok, Thailand. In addition Lithum Karunasena and Janith Batugedera of Royal, Senul Ratnayake and. Matheesha Wickramanayake from Dharmaraja and Thisum Gamege of Ananda are the team members while Vajira Wickramasinghe who is ITTF level three coach will accompany the team as coach cum Manager while Hasitha Samaraweera also join the team as a coach.

The Manager cum coach Vajira Wickramasinghe said this tournament will give good exposure for the young paddlers