Sri Lanka taste second victory

Beat Ireland 73-60:

Yasaratne GAMAGE reporting from Singapore

A combination of team work and good tactics secured Sri Lanka their second victory in the tournament when they overcame Ireland by 73 -60 in the opening match on the fourth day of the Nations Cup 2012 here at Toa Payoh Sports Hall, Singapore.

Yesterday Sri Lanka played with much confidence despite a tough resistance from the Irish. As centre, co captain Gayathri Lankathilke and goal attacker Semini Alwis were dead accurate passing the ball to goal shooter, co-captain Tharjini. The score board kept on ticking with a considerable goal margin in favour of Sri Lankans. Sri Lanka led the first quarter by 22-16 even with some missed passes where Irish took full advantage to score few goals and deficit the margin. There were some instances where netball basics were forgotten by the Sri Lankan players in the attacking third and centre third.

In the second quarter Sri Lanka’s wing attack Mareesha Fernando was seen passing the ball without aim on a few occasions. Semini on the other hand scored all the four attempts she got and so did Tharjini. At the half time Sri Lanka led 40-28.

The winners came to the court in the third quarter with Samanthi Nilushika, a replacement for wing attack Mareesha Fernando who fell down in the second quarter. Tharjini this time missed three attempts. The Irish goal keeper , Slater and defend Wendy did a good job to slow down the Sri Lankas fast scoring while Hynes and Lynch made use of most of their attempts.

Sri Lanka’s goal keeper Thisala and defend Gayani did not give that much of a resistance to the Irish. Thisala was seen really tired in the third and final quarter and also commited many fouls as well.

However it was a consolation victory for Sri Lanka after having defeated to Malaysian on the previous day.

Co captain , Gayathri said that the team was really happy to defeat Ireland to regain a good mentality. After yesterday’s game with Malaysia the team discussed what went wrong during the post match analysis in the evening and decided to make use of what we learnt from our training in Australia. I think lasses played hard and it was a team effort” she said.

“We are looking forward to winning the next match against Singapore on Friday”, she added. Today will be a rest day and tomorrow there will be three matches to end the league stage. Ireland will play against Malaysia in the first match while Namibia will vie with Tanzania in the second match. Sri Lanka will meet Singapore in the last match of the league.