Malaysia retains Asian Junior netball title

Chris Dhambarage reporting from India

NETBALL: Malaysia produced a repeat performance to retain the Asian Junior netball title for the second successive year defeating Sri Lanka by 61 goals to 46 goals in the final worked off at the Sree Kanteerva indoor stadium in Bangalore yesterday.

In a repeat of the previous final the Malaysian girls displayed a great amount courage and determination to outclass the Sri Lanka team by a convincing margin of 15 goals.

In fact Malaysia showed early promise as they built up a commanding lead of 20-8 at the completion of the first quarter which turned out to be the turning point in this final.

The defending champions never looked back from there onwards as they kept the score moving at a steady pace to clinch the final despite some late resistance from the opposition. Sri Lanka came back strongly during the second quarter collecting a total of 13 goals and were trailing 21-34 at that stage.

The Sri Lanka team, co-sponsored by Eva, kept their hopes alive to a certain extent while collecting a further 12 goals despite trailing 33-47 at the end of the third quarter.

But the situation was too demanding for the players as they failed to maintain the same pace while performing under tremendous pressure.

Sri Lanka's star player and goal attack Gishanthi Jayakody figured in a vain attempt scoring 36 goals from her 41 attempts but had little support from goal shoot Iresha Koralagodage and Sheruni Peiris.

Malaysia's goal shoot Aruna Santhappan had an excellent game and was on target most of the time while using her height advantage to a great extent. She received good support from goal attack Nur Ezzaini who was equal to the task while collecting some valuable rebounds.