Tharjini dominates

Chris DHAMBARAGE

She was the cynosure of all eyes as the island nation battled it out against the top 16 in the World. She lived upto expectations as the tallest player in the tournament with a splendid performance.

Thirty year old Tharjini Sivalingam stole the limelight with her accurate shooting as Sri Lanka lifted their ranking position up from the 18th to the 14th position at the 13th World Netball Championships in Singapore.

With a staggering height of six feet ten inches (2.06 metres) Tharjini Sivalingam turned out to be the biggest headache to the opposition as she grabbed the opportunity to emerge as the most successful shooter in the tournament.

The track record speaks volume of her performances with a total of 290 goals from 297 attempts at a fantastic success rate of 98 percent from the six matches she played in the tournament.

In fact she netted all the goals in the match against Barbados which the Lankans went down by a close margin of 59-63. Sivalingam came out with another magnificent performance while missing out just a solitary goal in the game against Singapore which Sri Lanka emerged victorious by a convincing margin of 62-51.

She was no doubt rated as one of the top performers even before the start of the tournament. She had built up a good reputation and had played a key role in Sri Lanka's success in some of the major Asian tournaments.

In fact Sivalingam had single handedly carried Sri Lanka to clinch the 2009 Asian Championships in Malaysia with a rousing 77-48 triumph against Singapore.

She had produced a similar performance to help Sri Lanka win the Nations Cup final 66-63 also against Singapore. At the Asian championships final Sivalingam contributed a total of 74 goals out of the 77 points for Sri Lanka and she also went on to become the top scorer of the championships netting 380 goals as against 152 to her next closest rival from Malaysia.

Even then the World Championships was altogether a different game with fierce competition and challenges from the very first outing. In fact the start was not all that impressive for Sivalingam as Sri Lanka struggled against the top teams in the tournament.

But as the tournament progressed Sivalingam came into own during the latter stages while leaving a lasting impression and more importantly providing Sri Lanka with a couple of consolation victories at the end.

No player was able to dominate the game and dictate terms so much as Sivalingam did during this event through her talent and potential. As a result some of the teams were forced to adopt unorthodox tactics in an attempt to prevent her from shooting.

In fact Singapore came out with a new ploy as they a launched a different technique which they named the "Lion Dance" which had inspired them from a dance done at the opening ceremony of the championship earlier.

The method is similar to a line out performed in a rugby match where a player lifts another to snatch the ball. But even these innovative tactics proved futile as that did not prevent Sivalingam from shooting at goal freely.

Tharjini Sivalingam was born the fifth of six children to a family in Evinai, Punnalaikattuvan, Jaffna, where she had her entire schooling, after which she received admission to the Eastern University in Batticaloa to complete her degree in Tamil. It was during her first year at university, that she was discovered as a potentially talented netball player while representing the Batticaloa District in a netball tournament in Vavuniya in 2004.

Thereafter she came down to Colombo to join the national netball team and she never looked back while performing her task to near perfection.