The young Visakian Nethmi Waduge stole the spotlight once again in the Colombo Championships last Tuesday when she went on to take the Under 18 championship title defeating Anika Seneviratne after a close contest in the finals.
The 18 year old Nethmi Wadue took the championships by surprise when she defeated four time national title holder Amritha Muttiah in the finals to take the Women’s open title last week. Adding to her resounding success, the Girls under 18 win comes as icing on the cake.
The Visakian faced Anika Seneviratne in the Under 18 contest where she won the first set 6-2 convincingly. Her counterpart Anika was reluctant to give away the title as the second game ended 7-6 going into break points. In the break points it was the champion title holder Waduge who got the first four points to take the Under 18 title. Runner up Anika Seneviratna had a good run in the under 18 category to make herself in to the finals. Disappointingly the superior Waduge was no match for Seneviratne.
With this victory, Nethmi Waduge cemented her position as the top seed in the Under 18 division while Muttiah still leads the National rankings with Nethmi Waduge trailing at the second spot.
In other news from Colombo’s premiere championships, the Boys Under 18 quarter final games are scheduled for 1.30 p.m. today at the SLTA playing courts.
Defending title holder Amritha Muttiah and Yasitha De Silva got their qualification to the finals in the Mixed Doubles defeating the Sanka Athukorale /Medira Samarasinghe pair. The other semifinal is scheduled to be played today between Dineshkanthan & Thisuri Molligoda and Arvind Fernando & Shenalie Weerasekara.
Also in the news is the highly anticipated clash between Ashwin Vijaragavan and Heera Ashiq for the Men’s Open Singles title which is scheduled to be played if the skies clear up.
