Sri Lanka pass Vietnam test with flying colours

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Category: tennis

Published on Saturday, 18 June 2011 11:10

Written by Guyanga Weerasekera

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Sri Lanka’s 2011 Davis Cup campaign was off to a flying start with Harshana Godamanna and Oshada Wijemanne racking up two “confidence-boosting” wins under the Colombo heat, to beat Vietnam on the opening day of the week long competition. Later Godamanna teamed up with Rajeev Rajapakse in the doubles match to take the tie 3-0.

Wijemanne started off proceedings with a 6-3 6-4 victory over Le Quoc Khanh. Khanh hardly troubled Wijemanne’s accurate serving skills, as Wijemanne showed the Sri Lankan fans his true potential on a tennis court.

Davis Cup hero and Sri Lankan number one, Harshana Godamanna was on court against Thanh Trung Hoang soon after. After a clinical first set 6-1, he found himself down a break early on in the second set. However, at 3-4 Godamanna broke Hoang to come back on level terms and win the set 6-4 to clinch the tie.

It was in the doubles encounter that Sri Lanka was pushed to find victory, after cruising to a 6-1 5-3 lead the Vietnamese pair came back form the dead to clinch 2nd set 7-5 and built a 5-3 lead in the 3rd set. After being a game away from defeat, it was Godamanna and Rajapakse’s time to turn the tables to clinch the 3rd set and the match 7-5.

Sri Lanka is drawn with Kuwait, Myanmar and Vietnam in to the group A while Lebanon, Malaysia, UAE and Oman are in group B. Kuwait is proving to pose the biggest challenge to Sri Lanka as they annihilated Myanmar 3-0 today. Sri Lanka plays either Kuwait or Myanmar tomorrow (16th).

The top two teams from each group go on to play the two teams from the other group in order to vie for a qualification spot for next years group 2 Davis Cup tie.

The Sri Lankan team comprises of Harshana Godamanna, Oshada Wijemanne, Thangarajah Dineshkanthan, Rajeev Rajapakse and Aasiri Iddamalgoda as non-playing captain.

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