Sri Lanka beats Bangladesh 2-1

Raju Ram - BAN beat  Eranga Alwis - SRI

Raju continued his progression with a victory at the #3 position, continuing to demonstrate he is coming along quite well.  Many coaches commented on the very smooth, fluid motion of his stroke and consistently hitting the ball well and in this match it was those strokes keeping him atop the scoreboard and Alwis behind him.  Raju played excellent length and was able to take it to the front when the opportunity became available and finished the point.  In all, this was his best performance of the games and looked like the Raju I’ve come to expect week in and week out.  He earned the win and I’m happy for him!

Binura Jayasuriya - SRI beat Masud Rana - BAN

Again Masud had a disappointing outing and has not played well during these games.  Aside from an opening round victory in the Individual portion of the event, Masud has struggled to find his rhythm and Jayasuriya was never pressured, easily finishing off rallies. 

Navin Samarasinghe - SRI beat Shopon Pervez - BAN

Navin has a deadly accurate forehand and will put the ball away if you don’t get him to move.  This was quickly apparent after the first game where Pervez was not catching this quick enough, in spite of repeated requests for him to go to the back hand.  The games were closely contested by Pervez didn’t take advantage of his opportunities and fell into 2-0 hole.  In the third game, he began playing as instructed playing flatter cross courts to keep the ball low and wide, making Samarasinghe move and getting him out of his comfort zone, but it was too late and Pervez took it to extra points before losing in the tiebreak.  Had we beaten Sri Lanka, it would have been for the first time and we would have had our first outright Bronze medal. 

In all this match proved to be a very good experience on many levels for our players and we will pick ourselves up again and try to at least grab a share of the Bronze with a victory over Nepal.

posted by Will