By A Special Sports Correspondent

Sri Lanka’s new tennis sensation Dinara De Silva has taken the court by storm and is knocking on the door to achieve greater successes.

Her leap to stardom began last year when she won the National singles crown beating one of her favourite players in the sport; Angelika Kurera.

And this year she followed that spectacle by winning the singles crown at the SSC Open where she beat her schoolmate Saajida Razick in the finals.

The clock has turned full circle for Dinara. Till last year she couldn’t compete at open events because of an ITF age rule; which prohibits junior tennis players from contesting against seniors till they reach age 14. Beating Angelika was perhaps one of her best moments in the game because one rarely gets to beat a player who you admire when the latter is still actively involved in tennis. Till a few years ago Dinara was just a little girl watching the seniors play and dreaming to emulate them. Now she is a feared opponent and even the seniors have to take her presence in a tournament seriously. On a note of encouragement she has said that she was given a huge welcome and much encouragement by the seniors when she stepped into playing in their league.

This year she added another feather in her cap when she was picked to represent Sri Lanka at the first round of the ITF Junior Circuit Tennis tournament (Colombo) where she shone for her country. The other players who did well at this tournament were Methvan Wijemanne and Vichinthya Nilaweera. She has qualified to play in the second round of the tournament which is now in progress at the SLTA courts in Green Path.

In a recent newspaper interview young Dinara had spelt out as her immediate goals to place herself within the top 100 ranked players in the world in the under 18 category. This target she hopes to reach within the next three years. Her present world ranking among juniors who are playing singles is 968 as at January 29, 2024. This apparently is her career best international ranking to date in the singles event.

One factor that stands in good stead for her is that she has supportive parents who encourage her involvement in tennis. However, at the initial stages of trying out sports, Dinara had dabbled in cricket. Her promise and potential shown in hand-eye coordination in the bat and ball game had prompted her dad to send her for tennis practices. Thus began a journey in tennis where she has delivered and done justice to the choice her dad made in picking a sport for her.

She is still a schoolgirl and does her studies at Bishop’s College, Colombo. She has represented her school at tennis, but despite her enthusiasm and appetite for tennis ‘winning’ at the sport came after much hard work and a long wait. According to newspaper articles about her she now practices at the Dineshkanthan Tennis Academy. But she still remembers her first tennis coaches who helped her cut teeth in the sport. She thanks them for introducing her to the sport and helping her in a manner in which the seeds of interest for tennis were planted in a manner in which this teenager would stick with the sport for a long time.

Playing tennis at national level can be very competitive for such a small girl like Dinara. She is aware of her work load in tennis and avoids walking in the path to ‘burn out’. This is why she may have skipped some tournaments which she would have contested in the recent past.

She has been quoted in newspaper interviews saying that tennis demands much physical work and a lot of expenses have to be met just to stay in the game. Right now other than playing tennis and managing her studies she has no time to enjoy some of the fun aspects of life any other teenager would love to experience. Though she must attend physical classroom sessions to pursue her education here in Sri Lanka she has said that in other countries tennis players have the option of following their studies via online education and spend the rest of the time of the day at the tennis academy. This is one area where Sri Lanka’s education authorities must focus on and make the necessary adjustments if they want the island’s teenage sportsmen and women to balance their school education and involvement in professional sport.

Looking forward to from what she achieved at the SSC Open and the recently concluded ITF Junior Circuit matches she hopes to make the Sri Lanka team at the Billy Jean King Cup (July/August), the Qualifier for Asia Oceania Main Event (April/May) and the Junior Billy Jean King Cup (under 16) Asia Oceania Pre-Qualifier Team Event which is scheduled in Colombo.

This girl who started playing tennis even before she started schooling in the Grade One class has come a long way. She remembers crying before a match when she was new to tennis, but if there are any tears that are shed now they have to be associated with the sweet successes of victory.

When a player young as her achieves stardom and becomes a teenage prodigy she builds a culture around her in what she is good at. The influence she is now able to create on other teenagers through tennis can be very ‘infectious’.