Despite shifting to hard courts, Sri Lanka continued to dominate at the Asia/Oceania Group III BNP Paribas Davis Cup Tournament defeating Myanmar 3/nil in the second tie that was completed just before dusk at the SLTA courts at Sir Marcus Fernando Mawatha on Thursday.
Once again it was Oshada Wijemanne who took to court for the first single match against Phyo Min Thar. Wijemanne won both sets comfortably 6/2, 6/1 and seemed to be at ease playing in hard courts.
Wijemanne played impeccable tennis and his powerful serves proved too much for Min Thar.
The second singles saw Harshana Godamanna take on Nge Hnaung. Although giving away four points in the first set Godamanne settled down and adjusted his pattern of play to suit the hard courts. Godamanna won 6/4, 6/2 to seal the tie on 2/nil.
Godamanna is also more familiar with hard courts. However he trained on clay courts for over two weeks running up to this tie and naturally had to adjust his game to get his timing correct.
The management decided to field Godamanna and Rajiv Rajapakse for the doubles match as well so that Godamanna could acclimatise himself with hard court conditions. It was Dineshkanthan who was down to play in the doubles match with Rajapakse.
Myanmar’s pair of Zaw Zaw Latt, who is familiar with conditions in Sri Lanka having coached here for some time, and Phyo Min Thar could not match the speed of Godamanna and Rajapakse. Sri Lanka won the match 6/4, 6/3 and gained the confidence that is much needed to take on Kuwait in their tie today.
Rajapakse said that they were not happy about switching to hard courts after having practised for so long on clay. However, they have now adjusted quickly enough and are feeling confident that they will fare better in the rest of the fixtures. However, Kuwait is yet to finish their match against Vietnam and interestingly Kuwait are held 1/all and the doubles will be continued this morning if weather holds good.
Lebanon beat UAE 2/1 with the Lebanese doubles pair offering a walk-over before it could finish. Malaysia who beat UAE 2/1 in an earlier match was playing against Oman in a game that is to be continued today.
RESULTS
GROUP A: SRI LANKA 3 MYANMAR 0, VIETNAM 1 KUWAIT 1; GROUP B: MALAYSIA 2 UAE 1, MALAYSIA 1 OMAN 1, LEBANON 2 UAE 1
