Three Sri Lankan badminton officials in Birmingham-by Dhammika Ratnaweera
Source:Dailynews
Three Sri Lankan Badminton umpires are officiating in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games. Two senior International umpires Rohana de Silva and Lakpriya Edirisinghe together with one and only lady Sri Lankan Badminton official Samanthi Nawarathe who is a line judge have joined Badminton World Federation (BWF) officials in Birmingham.
Rohana de Silva is a Sri Lanka Administrative Service (SLAS) officer currently serving as the Director of the External Resources Department, General Treasury. Prior to being promoted as the SLAS Officer, he had served as a teacher in government schools.
Rohana de Silva received his primary education at Rewatha Central College, Balapitiya before moving to Dharmasoka College, Ambalangoda for his secondary education.De Silva who was the former SLB Secretary holds a master’s degree in Economics from the University of Kelaniya and a bachelor’s degree in Natural Science from the Open University of Sri Lanka having served Sri Lanka Administration from long period .
Rohana started his badminton technical official career in 1995 and at present, he is a Badminton World Federation certificated Umpire, Badminton Asia (BA) Referee, and BA Umpire Assessor. He is a member of the Badminton Asia Technical Official Committee and the Sri Lanka Badminton Association Technical Committee too.
Rohana de Silva as an Umpire officiated in many top-level badminton tournaments including five world championships, six world Junior Championships, three world tour finals, Two Suderman Cup finals, and Thomas & Uber Cup Finals. Also, this is the third commonwealth game Rohana will represent Sri Lanka.
Meanwhile experienced BWF umpire Lakpriya Edirisinghe once again got a chance to represent Commonwealth Games after the successful events conducted by BWF.Lakpriya the product of Asoka MV Colombo later became the National rank shuttler from 1993 to 2005.
He started his umpiring career from 1995 presently works as BWF experience umpire having officiate more than 100 International tournaments all over the world.
He was the first Sri Lankan Badminton umpire to officiate the Paralympic games in Tokyo. He already officiated Asian Games, Commonwealth Games, Paralympic games,Asian Badminton championship as well as many tournaments conducted by South Asian, Asian and BWF . Edirisinghe presently handled his own Lakpriya Edirisinghe Badminton Academy at Ragama.
Samanthi Nawarathe the only official from Badminton who has officiated in most of the domestic tournaments.She had lot of experience as tournament referee at the domestic level having experience of officiating in foreign tours as line judge as well as umpire.
Samanthi hails from Rambukkana earlier worked at the Sri Lanka Badminton tournament committee activities and her ability to work as tournament match referee highly appreciated by the the SLB officials.
