Highlights of the tour were Baluraj working his way up until quarter finals beating Pakistan and substantial competition from Kuznetsov Aleksandr of Kyrgyztan and losing semi-final privileges to Uzbekistan’s Abdullaev Doniyorbek;
Ruwan Fonseka emerging to the quarter finals literally kicking rivals off the ladder including Chinese Taipei’s Huang Chun-Hsien to see his last fight with Sirait Iwan of Indonesia to whose strength and speed he succumbed; the women’s Kumite team comprising of Jayakody, Nirmali, Kumari and Samanmali beating powerful India in a nail-biter and ultimately losing to the even stronger Japanese.
Apart from these performances, Iresha Thirimanna and Tharika Samanmali too portrayed good form with more space left for filling with experience.
Iresha Thirimanna beat Nurdinova Bigaim of Kyrgyzstan to see the quarter final bout with Iwamoto Emiri of Japan. Emiri went on to bag the Continental Kata Title.
Meanwhile, Tharika Samanmali too displayed true grit and metal by winning her fight with India’s experienced star Jain Reena. Samanmali was barred from entering the semis by world ranker China’s Yin Xiaoyan who went on to be crowned Asia’s -61kg Kumite Queen.
Noteworthy other performances by the Lankans was, Dinusha Kumari Perera managing to put forward a courageous fight against Tran Thi Khan of Vietnam to whose prowess she ultimately submitted which led her to losing her Asian ranking as the 5th.
Prasanna Senanayake too was unable to go any further from the 1st round as he lost to China’s Li Fali who went on until the semis.
The Wickramagalle brothers along with Kanishka Silva could not take steps to enter the quarter finals as they lost to Iraq.
Buddhika Jayakody too in her fight against Wong-Sok I of Macau, showed excellent maneuvers but they were too basic in the hands of Macau’s advanced fighting techniques. The Women’s Team Kata title was not for the Lankans even though they won the only medal at this event at the previous championship, as they lost their bout to Malaysia.
With the experiences gained by this tour and being added to their exposure, the Lankan team will be intensifying their training in order to prepare for the upcoming South Asian Karate Championship that will be held in Sri Lanka in August.
