Kazakhstan routs Sri Lanka 115-54

Sanjaya Ariyaratne

BASKETBALL: The visiting cagers from Kazakhstan routed Sri Lanka by a massive margin of 115 points to 54 in their opening fixture of the FIBA Middle Asia zone Basketball qualifying championship match played at Sugathadasa Indoor Stadium, Colombo last evening.

The visitors completely dominated the proceedings with their accurate shooting after having taken a 49 points to 26 points lead at the half time.

Kazakhstan seized the advantage of their height to conquer the home side and piled up a basket almost at a will. The Lankans however, put up an improved performance in the later part of the game with some accurate shooting.

However, the home team was always trailing by a big margin and never looked like making a match of it.

Yevstigneyev Mikhail with 22 points, Ponomarev Anton with 19 points, Yargaliyev Rustan with 13 points, Tyutyunik Alexander and Nechayev Ivan with 13 points each excelled for the winning team. The team was captained by Issakov Yevgeniy and the other players were Beryulin Yegor, Shpeht Andrey, Voyeikov Maxim, Skornyakov Artyom, Korovnikov Dmitriy and Gavrilov Dmitriy. Virantha Bastian with 14 points, Randima Sooriyarachchi with 11 points and Chamath Danawansa with 8 points were the chief scorers for Sri Lanka.

The home side was skipped by Jagath Kulatunga while Vajira Kumarasinghe, Shanaka Perera, Harshadeva Yasaratne, Prageeth Pushpakumara, Gamunu Sandaruwan, Asanka Suwaris, Roshel Mendis and Anushka Nilakshan were the other players for losers.

Eventhough, altogether twelve countries have been invited for this tournament, only India and Kazakhstan arrived here to take part. Out of this three teams only two top teams will be qualified to take part in the forthcoming FIBA Asia basketball championships which is scheduled to be held in Japan. This tournament is being organised by the Sri Lanka Basketball Federation under the approval of FIBA Middle Asia, the regional governing body. Sri Lanka has not hosted an international cager tourney since 1991.

Therefore SLBF consider this as an important milestone to end the 15 years drought. Today Kazakhstan will take on India in their second match at Sugathadasa Indoor Stadium at 5.30 p.m. Tomorrow Sri Lanka will play against India in their second fixture and the final will be worked off on Thursday at the same venue.