Today (23rd April) Sri Lanka faced defending champions Bangladesh in a must win game in Jakarta, Indonesia and the men in blue suffered a 5 – 0 defeat in the uphill task.
The scoreline never justified the effort of the Sri Lankan side as they showed a lot of heart against the tournament favorites. Sri Lanka managed to fight almost for three quarters of the game without giving any scoring opportunity to the formidable Bangla Tigers.
In the second quarter a penalty was given against Sri Lanka for blocking a sure scoring opportunity by a leg of a defending player. But the Sri Lankan Goalkeeper Tharindu Hendeniya did an excellent job to block the penalty stroke and prevented a divine opportunity to score.
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It was a close tussle until the last six minutes of the 3rd quarter where Bangla Tigers tasted their first goal following a poor defence by Lankans. Couple of minutes later, Bangladesh were awarded another goal and Sri Lankan players started a protest by arguing that it was clearly hit from the outside of the scoring circle. Sri Lanka delayed the restart as there was a message from the bench to withdraw from the field. Meanwhile Bangladesh took a free stroke and straight away they went for another goal before Sri Lankans got ready to play. While a referee’s decision was being questioned, the Bangladesh players shattered the spirit of the game as usual.
Later the matters were settled and Bangladesh scored another couple of goals to seal a 5 – 0 victory over their arch-rivals, Sri lanka.
Unbeaten Chinese Taipei will take on Kazakhstan while the defending champions Bangladesh will be fighting against Oman in the semifinals.