St. Peter's clinch tennis double

Tennis: St. Peter's College emerged champions in the National Schools tournament concluded Tuesday at the Green Path courts of the SLTA, beating Royal College in a closely contested final.

This win comes close on the heels of them annexing the Public Schools championship a couple of months ago, again beating Royal in the overall points table.

The National Schools tournament where each school fields their best five players was a tussle between Royal, Ananda and St. Peter's.

In the run up to the final the Peterities made short work of De Mazenod College winning both the singles quite comfortably. The semi-finals against Ananda was expected to go into the deciding doubles encounter but did not go its distance as Surendran playing the 2nd singles for the Peterities beat the much fancied Chavi Thalagala, a former Sri Lanka Under 14 player.

This upset win followed Peterite Dineshkanthan's, who has a Under 18 world ranking of 500, effortless win over Madusha Wijesuriya. This put paid to Ananda's further advancement in the tournament and were relegated to the 3rd place play off against St. Thomas'.

The Royal-Peter's final provided much excitement in view of the several ties fought out between these traditional rivals. The Peterities took the first singles with Dineshkanthan beating Kushan Weerakody in straight sets 6/1, 6/2. In the second singles giant killer Surendran could not repeat his performance against Ananda and went down against Junior Davis Cup player Indika Wettasinghe 1/6, 2/6.

The championship crown boiled down to the doubles with the two singles being shared. The Peterite doubles pair of Embash Sudusinghe and Stephan Martin (current Sri Lanka Under 14) engaged the Royal pair of Shehan Gomez (also Sri Lanka under 14) and Kavinda Nagodawithana in a gruelling 3 setter.

Preterites took the first at 6/4 and were leading in the second set at 5/5 and 40 love. But the Royalists turned the tables on them and won the set in a tie breaker.

Much was expected from the Royalists in the 3rd set as they were quite fired up after the exciting 2nd set win. But the Peterities certainly had other ideas and walked all over them with a 6/0 win.