By Dhammika Ratnaweera
Sri Lankan women’s double pair Thilini Hendahewa and Kavidi Sirimannage made superb fighting effort to beat Switzerland pair Celine Burklet and Sabrina Jaquet with three hard-fought setters paving the way to beat higher rank Switzerland with 3-2 at the Sudirman Cup Badminton Tournament played at Guangxi Sports Centre, Nanning, China on Wednesday. With this thrilling encounter, Sri Lanka finished at the top of the Group 3B and qualify for the classification round tomorrow.
The victory means that Sri Lanka is now ranked 24th two positions behind Switzerland. Earlier, Sri Lanka beat Slovakia and Lithuania earlier without much effort but yesterday they had a fighting effort to beat Switzerland.
Before, the women’s double encounter, Sri Lanka have tied 2 all with the Swiss. Sri Lanka had won the men’s singles and men’s double but lost to women’s single and mixed double to make wide open the finals. The deciding women’s double game Hendahewa and Sirimannage lost their first game 21/16 but they used their full effort to win second and third sets 22-20 and 22-20 after making superb fighting display to come on top of their Group.
Earlier Dinuka Karunaratna the experienced campaigner of the Sri Lanka team got an early lead with winning the men’s single game against Christian Kirchmayr 21/16, 21/14. However Sachin Dias and Thilini Hendahewa lost their mixed doubles game against Oliver Schaller and Celine Burklet after two fighting sets 21/18, 21/18 to equal the game.
Sri Lanka team changed their women’s single player Dilmi Dias to replace Kavidi Sirimannage consider her experience for this game. This match was very vital for both teams to get lead. However, Switzerland played Sabrina Jaquet made hard-fought first set to beat Sirimannage 21/15 and she was keen to outclassed Sirimannge 21/10 to win the game. The third men’s double match Sri Lankan pair Sachin Dias and Buwaneka Gunatilleka lost the first set 20/22 after a close battle over Tobias Kuenzi and Oliver Schaller but Buwaneka and Sachin made good come back to win second and third set 21/8 and 21/15 to finish the game for their favour.
At the classification round, Sri Lanka will meet Ireland tomorrow 24th while Switzerland will meet Australia.
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