Royal College will be hoping to retain the E. F. C. Pereira Challenge Trophy for another year when they take on traditional rivals S. Thomas’ College in the annual tennis encounter on August 12 at Royal’s newly constructed P. Nagendran Tennis Complex in Reid Avenue, commencing at 8.00 a.m.
This Trophy was donated by D. L. Seneviratne, an old Royalist and a former President of the Sri Lanka Tennis Association (SLTA), in memory of E. F. C. Pereira, who was a teacher at Royal for 20 years, and thereafter, a teacher at S. Thomas’ for a further 18 years.
In addition, the late Pereira was also the teacher-in-charge of tennis at both Royal and S. Thomas’. This time Royal will be led by the experienced Nethwin Dharmaratne and they had a good season this year with the Under-15 Team emerging as the runners-up in the Public Schools event and the Under-13 Team emerging joint third at the same event.
The Royalists are coached by Renouk Wijemanne, a former Royalist, former Davis Cup player and the current coach of Sri Lanka’s Davis Cup Team. Meanwhile, S. Thomas’ will be captained by the season campaigner Wenuka Kithnula and they are coached by Anjuna Anthony.
This is the 18th encounter in the series, which was inaugurated in 2003. The encounter will consist of three Singles matches and two Doubles matches in the Under-13, Under-15 and Under-19 categories. The winner of the Under-19 tie will be awarded the E. F. C. Pereira Challenge Trophy. As the teams are evenly matched the matches are expected to be highly competitive and exciting.
Royal are the current holders of the E. F. C. Pereira Challenge Trophy having won last year’s encounter 3-2 under the leadership of Ramith Herath at Mount Lavinia. Overall, Royal have dominated the series with a win record of 13 while S. Thomas’ have won the Trophy on four occasions.
The teams:
Royal (From): Nethwin Dharmaratne (Captain), Thilina Dissanayake, Methvan Wijemanne, Himath Hettihewa, Thevjan Weerasekara, Chenul Wickramasinghe, Jamal Sabry, Ryan Sugathadasa, Ranida Ranaweera and Kavish Maddumage.
S. Thomas’ (From): Wenuka Kithnula (Captain), Zaid Zihar, Meneshka Ratnasingham, Aahil Kaleel, Navindu Herath, Sethika Atalugama, Chanakya Perera, Rishane Dwight, Shaveen Samarawickrama and Shaveen Nanayakkara.
Chris Dhambarage