Unruffled by any idea of one’s ranks and records, Harshana Godamanna, on right, went on the rampage in one of the best, if not the best, displays of tennis seen from a Sri Lankan in this generation. Still the feat was overshadowed by inter-provincial cricket in the following day media. Here, ‘Godda’ with the Sri Lanka cricket captain Kumar Sangakkara.

(Pic by Nishan S. Priyantha/Files)

"Popularity and money have distanced him from us. He called us ‘ayya’ (elder brother) those days. Now when he sees us, he’d just say, ‘Machang, gihilla ennan’ (I’ll see you). Now the b****** is head-swollen".

That was a reference made by a co journalist to a prominent member of the national cricket team. Yes, cricket in Sri Lanka involves a lot of money and a consequential ‘pop’ factor. It is immensely popular at all social levels. Cricket is the king of sport here. Others are all its subordinates. Of them, tennis, one last Bastian of the really colonial sport in Sri Lanka, is only a very trivial subordinate.

The fact that tennis too had been on par with cricket at the dawn of the last century is a worthless argument now. That the famous C. H. and C. I. Gunasekeras played for Ceylon not only in cricket but also in tennis, that both Ceylon and India --or Madras (later Tamil Nadu)-- were involved in a long-running traditional cricketing dual for the famous M. J. Gopalan Trophy but also in tennis, mostly in the Davis Cup where legendary Indians like Ramanathan Krishnan, Anand and Vijay Amritraj, Shiv-Prakash Misra, Sashi Menon, Premjit Lall and Jaidip Mukerjea played against the top Ceylonese players then; these events made the vivid memory of the mainly Colombo-based sports enthusiasts of the 1950s, ’60s and the ’70s. Cricket and tennis had no big difference in their histories.

Until cricket underwent its recent transformation, both tennis and it were basically ‘colonial’ and were restricted more or less to the elite. Names of top national level men’s tennis players, ‘Koo’ de Saram, Rupert Ferdinands, Bernard Pinto, D. D. N. Selvadurai, P. Senaka Kumara, Lasantha Fernando, Arjun Fernando and Frank Sebaratnam, etc. were often talked about in the same breath along with names of F. C. de Saram, Ben Navaratne, Sargo Jayawickrema, Mahadevan Sathasivam, T. B. Kehelgamuwa, Michael Tissera and Anura Tennekoon, the famous All-Ceylon cricketers then, in the posh upper class discourse.

But, now the times have changed. There is hardly anyone who knows who plays tennis for Sri Lanka these days. Only the limited tennis fraternity is keen to know that. It has come down to a virtual private show of Green Path, Colombo 7, where one finds the national association of tennis. It doesn’t have at least 25 active clubs round the island now. In this disheartening context enters the Godamanna factor!

A four-year-old son of Thilak Godamanna, prominent businessman and the producer of the critically acclaimed Vijaya – Malini film hit, ‘Bambaru Ewith’, directed by the eminent Dharmasena Pathiraja in the late 1970s, began playing tennis under the tutelage of a leading Colombo-based coach, Sylvester Francis. A lanky Royal College student was just 16 when he first played for Sri Lanka in a Davis Cup, in Dhaka in 2002.

Then, since 2005, this wiry left hander, with a some what outdated single-handed style back-hand stroke, has been able to emerge as the leading contender in the island’s tennis. He has been able to carry single-handedly the country’s hopes when they’re out of Sri Lanka. You miss ‘Godda’, you miss the match, the tie and everything. That has been the norm for six long years now.

In 2006, he went pro –a brave and highly expensive move that not a single other tennis player in this country thought of making since Arjun Fernando (who had been ranked 293 in the world over 30 years ago)— and went to Bangkok to train fulltime under Dominik Utzinger. Harshana achieved a career high 811 in Oct., 2008, before leaving the men’s professional tour circuit (the ATP) disgruntled.

But Godamanna, after retiring from the tour, continued with his training, playing in local tourneys expecting to leave for the US for his higher studies. Harshana was, though, never to miss a Davis Cup as he reckoned it a true ‘national duty’ of any tennis player. He played for Sri Lanka this year too, when she met New Zealand in Colombo for the first time in the history, after helping the country qualify for the Davis Cup Zonal Group 2 last year in Syria, following a decade-long stagnation in the lowest Group 3 and 4.

Last Sun. (March 7) at the SLTA in Colombo, he met the Kiwi No.1 Daniel King-Turner, who was probably the highest ranked to play in Sri Lanka in the recent history, in a key singles match of this year’s Davis Cup tie. King-Turner was 227 in the grand list which that amazing Swiss Roger Federer leads.

Unruffled by any idea of one’s ranks and records, Godamanna went on the rampage in one of the best, if not the best, displays of tennis seen from a Sri Lankan in this generation. After losing the first two sets 4-6 and 4-6, ‘Godda’ levelled the match, winning the next two by 7-5, 7-6 (7-4) in frantic five-hour long mid-day battle for supremacy until the Kiwi pro succumbed due to leg cramps before vomiting, unable to cope with extreme temperature and humidity.

The match was then forfeited to Godda in the fifth set, which he was leading 3-0, to the utmost jubilation of the sparse Sunday crowd. Never in the recent history of this country, tennis has seen such an overwhelming upset. But sadly, a truly defining moment of a sport in the island had been overshadowed by a mere inter-provincial event in the media sports coverage, both that night and the day after. The provincial event was, no wonder, a cricketing one.

What sad message does this whole scenario give us? We are compelled to see what we don’t want to see. The highlights we watch are not really ‘highlights’. Some golden opportunities are missed. Sports like tennis would’ve made use of them in a more useful manner.