He is young and shy. But he turns into a monster when on the tennis court. Those that have followed his exploits have even described him as the next Chisomo Lumeta. His name is Ramesh Banda.<\/p>\n
Just as many have had humble beginnings on their path to success, the 15-year-old also started small.<\/p>\n
He started by escorting his best friend, Happy Shonga, each time he left home for training sessions.<\/p>\n
But it was in 2011 when Ramesh first took up the tennis racket to test his potential in the game. By then, he was only a Standard 2 pupil.<\/p>\n
He developed a liking for the spot and it quickly became part and parcel of his daily routines.<\/p>\n
He was later given further encouragement when a Mzuzu-based organisation, Saved By the Ball (SBB), discovered his talent and took him on board.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis marked the beginning of my career. But it took me three competitive games to finally register a win. I then went on to compete in the 2012 Presidential Cup and defied the odds to claim the first position in the Under-12 category,\u201d Banda recalls.<\/p>\n
It was this success that earned him a place in the Malawi National Junior Tennis Team.<\/p>\n
Because of tournament drought after the Presidential Cup, he kept playing games organised by SBB.<\/p>\n
Two years later and at the age of 11, Banda was part of the team that represented Malawi at the Junior Circuit Championship in Botswana. He won bronze medal after emerging third.<\/p>\n
In 2015, the tennis starlet was the only junior Malawian player selected for that year\u2019s Southern Africa Tennis Championship in South Africa, having impressed at the previous competition.<\/p>\n
Banda was also successful, as he managed to win gold for Malawi. The achievement enabled him to participate in the International Tennis Federation Masters tournament, where he finished third.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was really painful because it ended my chances of studying at the High Performance Centre in Morocco,\u201d explained the Standard Eight pupil, who idolises the Swiss professional tennis player Roger Federer.<\/p>\n
His take on Malawi tennis <\/strong><\/p>\n The last born in the family of four says on several occasions, the Malawi National Junior Tennis Team has failed to deliver because of poor preparations.<\/p>\n He says players from Blantyre and Mzuzu train in their respective localities, a situation he blames for lack of coordination when they go out to represent the country.<\/p>\n \u201cFor four years now, we have never played a national tennis tournament. This on its own is a disadvantage to upcoming players like me who dearly love the sport. Though sometimes I get discouraged, but I am positive that the sport has a bright future,\u201d he said, citing South Africa-based Chisomo Lumeta as his inspiration.<\/p>\n The starlet, who aspires to become a medical doctor besides becoming the world tennis star, added that lack of facilities in the country is also a big challenge.<\/p>\n SBB Director\u2019s views <\/strong><\/p>\n SBB Director Owen Mfune, said tennis has a huge following among the youth, adding that promoting it can help the country win medals at big international events.<\/p>\n He also warned that the long absence of national tennis tournaments only succeeds in killing off the youth\u2019s interest in the game.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is demotivating for a player to spend the majority of their time just training for years without any hope that they will compete for honours at any time. It simply demoralises the little ones because they do not know what they are playing for,\u201d Mfune said.<\/p>\n He also bemoaned lack of proper facilities and equipment for players across the country, blaming it for retarding the development of the game.<\/p>\n Mfune asked sports authorities in the country to seriously consider constructing facilities for all sports disciplines in the country to realise the dream of turning Malawi into a sporting nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He is young and shy. But he turns into a monster when on the tennis court. Those that have followed his exploits have even described him as the next Chisomo Lumeta. His name is Ramesh Banda. Just as many have had humble beginnings on their path to success, the 15-year-old also started small. He started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44089,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44085\/revisions\/44089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}