SL upstage Italy at wheelchair tennis world cup

Sri Lanka’s wheelchair tennis team edged Italy 2-1, after clinching two relative straightforward victories and narrowly missing out on a closely-contested third, at the BNP Paribas Wheelchair World Team Cup, held at the Club Ali Bey Manavgat in Antalya, Turkey.

The Sri Lankans’ two wins were extensively engineered by Upali Rajakaruna, who ousted his Italian opponent Luca Arca 6-2, 6-3, and then paired up with Gamini Dissanayake to rout Arca and compatriot Fabian Mazzei 6-3, 6-3.

The latter triumph came after Dissanayake had battled commendably, albeit fruitlessly, against Mazzei. Dissanayake started tenaciously, taking the first set 7-5, before the Italian surged back into the contest in the second set with an easy 6-3 success. 

Mazzei then rode the wave of that momentum into the third and began to wear down his Lankan opponent, who eventually surrendered the set and the match 7-5. Things will not get any easier for the Sri Lankans as their next Pool D opponents in the Men’s World Group 2 segment are Spain, whom they will play on 27 May. The competition began on 25 May and will run until 31 May, featuring a total of 52 teams from 28 countries competing across four categories: men, women, quad and junior. The BNP Paribas World Team Cup, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2015, is the ITF’s flagship wheelchair tennis event, often referred to as the Davis and Fed Cups of wheelchair tennis. 

The initial event took place in California in 1985 involving six men’s teams. The women’s competition began the following year, with the quad and junior events introduced in 1998 and 2000 respectively. Due to the increased number of teams wanting to take part, the ITF introduced regional qualification for the men’s and women’s events in 2012.