Great show by our junior cager girls

BASKET BALL: For the first time in the history of Sri Lanka's women's basketball, the cagers who toured Vietnam for the 4th Asian Schools Basketball Championships proudly returned having won the bronze medal.

This is a great achievement considering that never before has a women's team performed so brilliantly.

When the team left for Vietnam, not many gave them chance of bringing back a medal.

They were expected to be just making the numbers.

But the girls who are oozing with talent, put to shame many other better trained teams and with this rare achievement have proved that with more sophisticated training they could even win gold.

All the players who took the court excelled and players from the other teams were simply amazed at the talent that was on display.

The cager authorities must take note and the girls are persisted with should walk into the national team before long.

The players seemed to be well versed in every aspect of the game and performed their duties to perfection. For this all players in unison were unanimous that all credit should go to their hard working coach Tuan Muard Ahmath, popularly known as 'Raju'.

Ahmath spent many hours with the girls fine tuning them and when the team left, they were confident that they were going to leave their mark in the tournament and were going hard at their opponents.

Ahmath has been in the game and as a promising coach for quite sometime now. As a player he was outstanding and now as a coach shows immense potential and those running the game should take notice of his capabilities and make better use of him.

Ahmath represented the Colombo District BA which emerged champions at the Junior National Tournament and played for the CDBA in the nationals. He also played in the CDBA team that were runners-up in the Junior nationals. He is also a member of the Colombo Bulls BC.

After his playing days Ahmath took to coaching and has done wonders as his record will show.

He coached many teams and most of them had the honour of winning trophies. Here are the teams he coached - St. Paul's Milagiriya, Colombo International School, Sri Lanka Police, St. Bridget's Convent, Hatton National Bank (Girls), Delmege Forsyth, David Pieris Co and Hongkong and Shanghi Bank.

An old boy of Isipatana College, he has followed several coaching courses conducted by the International Olympic Committee. There are many other achievements of this dedicated player and coach that is too numerous to mention, but suffice to say that he must be recognised and given the avenues to further his chosen field.

Ahamath spoke in glowing terms of the girls who went to Vietnam and described them as a well disciplined and a team that took the court in a positive frame of mind and hell bent on winning.

The other countries that participated in this tournament were Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. China emerged champions in the boys and girls section, Malaysia were runners-up in the boys and Hong Kong runners-up in the women's section.