Time for the Lankan administrators to ponder
The first-ever Yonex Sunrise international badminton tournament came to an end on a high note at the Sugathadasa Indoor stadium courts last week.
Dinuka Karunaratne was the only Sri Lanka shuttler to give some smile to the local supporters’ faces - File pic
Though this was a fourth category tournament where the World Badminton Federation categorising is concerned this tournament opened a window for the SLBA to gauge the standards of our players and their commitments. Even at the absence of most of world top ranked players all the other players who took part exhibited a high standard and a good quality of badminton to their capabilities.
All in all this was not a good tournament for Sri Lanka. Only one player came to a striking distance of a gold medal but none of the others in both men’s and women’s categories failed to impress. Sri Lanka’s main hope, two times Olympic contestant Niluka Karunaratne failed to live up to his reputation as he was knocked out in the pre-quarter finals by Indian H.S. Prannoy. Playing in the semi-finals that went on for three sets this Indian managed to win one set with a slim margin was beaten well and truly by the champion Huan Li of Korea. On the other hand Niluka’s brother Dinuka showed a lot of promise though he went down to another Indian Anand Pawar in the semi-finals. Both brothers went up to the deciding third sets but the fitness they displayed in the previous two sets were seem to have vanished as they were looking tired. Niluka managed only to collect nine points and Dinuka only scored 11 points in these deciding sets which they lost.
This is an area of which the coaches should be concerned of. Other Sri Lankan shuttlers just showed average performances. Apart from the Karunaratne brothers five other Sri Lankan shuttlers qualified for the second round. It should be noted as Sri Lanka had to satisfy with only a bronze medal while our closest neighbour India dominated the tournament by winning two golds and three silver medals. The other medal winners were Singapore (2 golds, 1 silver), Thailand (1 gold, 1 bronze), Korea (1 gold) and Chinese Taipei (2 bronze).
Considering the performances of our badminton players in this tournament the badminton hierarchy should realise where we stand in the world badminton arena especially in Asia and the steps taken for the improvement and development of the game will be monitored closely by the badminton loving public.